49^ The Smithsortian Instihttioii 



" Material for this work was forwarded to the Smithsonian 

 Institution, with a number of other Indian vocabularies. 

 . . . The intention was to publish it with other manuscripts 

 in the course of several years, — as a part of the miscellane- 

 ous collections of the Institution, but it was afterwards 

 concluded that more service could be done in the way of 

 advancing knowledge, — with the small appropriation which 

 could be devoted to this purpose, by transferring the work to 

 Mr. John G. Shea of New York, to be published as a part of 

 his interesting series of American Linguistics. It is accord- 

 ingly presented to the student of ethnology by Mr. Shea, 

 under the auspices and in part at the expense of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution." 



Since 1881, the National Museum has made separate an- 

 nual Reports. From 1881 to 1883 they were embodied in 

 the Smithsonian Report. Since 1884 they have formed a 

 second volume of the Smithsonian Report, and consist of an 

 account of the administrative work of the year, with an ap- 

 pendix containing papers by members of the staff concerning 

 , the collections, or by collaborators of the Institution, based 

 upon these collections. Some of these publications are large 

 and valuable documents, containing more than one thousand 

 pages and many illustrations. 



Since 1878 the Museum has issued an octavo series en- 

 titled "Proceedings of the United States National Museum," 

 the nineteenth volume of which is now in course of publication, 

 their character being indicated by the following statement: 



" Many of the objects gathered are of a novel and import- 

 ant character, and serve to throw a new light upon the study 

 of nature and of man. 



"The importance to science of prompt publication of de- 

 scriptions of this material led to the establishment of the 

 present series, . . . the distinguishing particularity of which 

 is that the articles are published in pamphlet form as fast as 



