47 The Smithsonian Institution 



service to the general government without additional 

 salary." 3 



The operations of the Commission were reported upon 

 briefly by the Secretary of the Institution, from year to year, 

 and the manifold importance of the explorations was fre- 

 quently insisted upon. In the Report just quoted from, Pro- 

 fessor Henry remarked: "The labors of the United States 

 Fish Commission can scarcely be too highly estimated." ' 



The history of the Commission cannot be more than 

 lightly touched upon here. 



In his first report Professor Baird acknowledges the aid 

 received from the Institution through the loan of nets, 

 dredges, and other apparatus, whereby the Commission was 

 saved "the considerable outlay which would otherwise have 

 been necessary." An equipment was soon secured which 

 was improved year by year, and at last received its most 

 important addition in the form of a sea-going steamer, the 

 Albatross, which enabled the Commission to carry on explo- 

 rations of the highest scientific interest in the deep sea, off 

 the coasts of the United States a considerable portion of 

 the results of which have been or are being published under 

 the Institution. 



The Bureau of American Ethnology is the most recently 

 organized bureau concerned in explorations with which the 

 Institution has had intimate relations ; but the subjects dealt 

 with, as I have already stated, were among the earliest which 

 it lent its aid in elucidating. 



" It is well known," wrote Secretary Baird in his report 

 for 1879, "that the natural history of primitive man, espe- 

 cially in North America, has always been a special object of 

 the attention of the Smithsonian Institution. The first vol- 



1 " Smithsonian Report," 1877, page 51. ^Ibidem, page 50. 



