PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 301 



Institution to this brancli of knowledge The collection 



of the archasology and ethnology of America, in the National 

 Museum, is the most extensive in the world : and in order to 

 connect it permanently with the name of Smithson, it has been 

 thought advisable to prepare and publish at the expense of the 

 Smithsonian fund, an exhaustive work on American anthropology, 

 in which the various classes of specimens shall be figured and 

 described."* This great work still remains to be perfected. 



Publications. — To attempt the recapitulation of the various 

 branches of original research initiated or directly fostered by 

 the Institution, would be to write its history. The range and 

 variety of its active operations, and the value of their fruits, are 

 in view of the limited income, and the collateral drains of less 

 important objects exacted from it, something quite surprising. 

 Scarcely a department of investigation has not received either 

 directly or indirectly liberal and efficient assistance : and a host 

 of physicists in the successful prosecution of their diverse labors, 

 have attested their gratitude to the Institution, and no less to 

 the ever sympathetic encouragement of its Director. 



Over one hundred important original Memoirs, generally too 

 elaborate to be published at length by any existing scientific so- 

 ciety, issued in editions many times larger than the most liberal 

 of any such society's issue, most of them now universally recog- 

 nized as classical and original authorities on their respective 

 topics, forming twenty-one large quarto volumes of " Smith- 

 sojJiAN Contributions to Knowledge," distributed over every 

 portion of the civilized or colonized world, constitute a monu- 

 ment to the memory of the founder, James Smithson, such as 

 never before was builded with the outlay of one hundred thou- 

 sand pounds: and before which the popular Lyceums of our lead- 

 ing cities, with endowments averaging double this amount, pale 

 into insignificance. 



Such as these Lyceums with their local culture, admirable 

 and invaluable in their way, but exerting no influence upon the 

 progress of science, or outside of their own communities, and 

 scaiTely known beyond their cities' walls,— such was the type of 

 institute which early legislators could alone imagine. Such as 

 the " Smithsonian Institution" stands to-day,— such is the mon- 

 ument mainly constructed by the foresight, the wisdom, and the 

 resolution of Henry.f All' honor to the Regents, who with 



* SmHyonian Report for 1877. pp. -2, 23. Circulars broadly distrib- 

 uted by tbe Institution, bave served to give desired direction to popular 

 attention and activity in this field of research ; and the extent of co- 

 operation is such as probably only the "Smitbscnian" could have se- 

 cured, unless by a vastly greater outlay. 



f "It is not by its castellated buildincf, nor tbe exhibition of tbe mu- 

 seuui of the Government, that the Institution has achieved its present 



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