34 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM. 1904. 



devolving- upon the employees. So diverse and so full of detail is this 

 branch of administration that it would be quite impossible to discuss 

 the subject adequately in this connection, but some idea of its extent 

 and complexities may be obtained from the reports of the head 

 curators. 



The packages as received have to be unpacked and their contents 

 assorted in accordance with the departments or divisions to which the 

 specimens belong. A complete record of each accession is made and 

 retained in the office of registration. In the various divisions to which 

 the} 7 are then transferred the specimens are labeled, numbered, and 

 catalogued serially, after which they are arranged in cases or in stor- 

 age, their safety and convenience of reference being presumably 

 secured by these several acts. Unless they come identified they may 

 be named at once, but the work of classification goes on slowly for 

 the most part, and years sometimes elapse before a collection can be 

 thorough^ identified and described, as noted under the head of 

 " Researches." 



As a part of general museum work may be included the duties of 

 the preparatory in preparing, poisoning, and mounting specimens; in 

 extracting fossils from their matrix, in cutting rock specimens to a 

 convenient size, and making thin sections to show their structure; in 

 modeling and arranging lay-figure groups, and in many other directions. 



In the Department of Anthropology, where the objects average 

 larger than in other departments, there has long been greater need 

 for the use of outside storage, but during the year considerable inside 

 storage has been gained by the building of racks and shelves back of 

 exhibition cases. This has afforded some relief, and permitted the 

 overhauling and improvement of the reserve collection. Through 

 cooperation with the Bureau of American Ethnology, the work of 

 photographing, singly or in groups, the members of Indian delega- 

 tions, which have lately been numerous, has been so increased as to 

 greatly enlarge the tine portrait series of American natives started 

 several years ago. 



The Department of Anthropology has two preparators' laboratories, 

 one for the making of models of objects of various classes, mostly 

 ethnologic, for filling out the Museum series of exhibits and for 

 exchange purposes, the other concerned with the making of replicas 

 of Museum specimens in plaster. During the year 45 models were 

 completed in the former, while in the latter an exceptionally large 

 amount of work was accomplished, the regular preparators being 

 assisted by two other skilled workmen especially employed in con- 

 nection with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Molds of 120 of 

 the most important archeological objects in the National Museum 

 were made, and from these several sets of casts were obtained, 

 one, properly colored, being installed with the Museum's exhibit at 



