77 The Smithsonian Institution 



as one of the great scientific institutions and museums of the 

 world, the Smithsonian is naturally an American institution, 

 founded by individual munificence, aided in its development 

 by appropriations from public funds of the United States. 

 While renowned foreign scholars have deemed it an honor 

 to be associated with its work, the majority of anthropologists 

 who have aided in its growth have been American specialists 

 on subjects connected with America. Few countries have a 

 larger and more varied anthropological field to study than 

 our own. Fifty years ago the relative proportion of the 

 unknown to the known in American anthropology was much 

 larger than at present. It is an inevitable result of these and 

 other influences that, whatever its aspirations, the dominant 

 influence of the Smithsonian Institution on the study of an- 

 thropology must be, as we can say with pride it has been, in 

 fostering the study of American ethnology and archaeology. 



As a national institution, there is but one ideal possible for 

 the Smithsonian Institution, and that the highest, the leading 

 scientific center of the intellectual life of a great nation. In 

 American anthropology it should stand, as it has stood, without 

 a rival in this field, not one of several institutions fostering 

 American science, but the leader, appealing to scholars through 

 the most profound researches, and to the public and students 

 through the most carefully arranged museum in the country. 



GENERAL REMARKS ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL 

 COLLECTIONS 



THE enormous collections of material in the exhibits of the 

 Smithsonian Institution illustrating archaeology or the dis- 

 tribution of man in time, and ethnography or geographical 

 distribution, form but a part of those under charge of the 

 curator. Its wealth is known to the special student who 



