EEPOET OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 11 



specimeDS. It is proper to say in this connection that the actual in- 

 crease was not so great as shown by the records, since during- this 

 period a large amount of material previously received had been brought 

 under control and placed on the books of the Museum. It should also 

 be borne in mind that the present Museum building was planned with 

 reference to the reception of the material in its custody at the time of 

 its construction. 



In the Armory building there are at the present time several hun- 

 dreds of boxes containing valuable material which has never been un- 

 packed, since there is no space available for the display of the specimens. 

 Many of the boxes contain collections which were brought to the Museum 

 through the medium of special acts of Congress. 



Independently of the collections obtained at expositions, a very large 

 amount of material has been received from foreign Governments, among 

 •which may be mentioned those of Mexico, Central Ame-rica, several of 

 the South American States, and Japan, which have made extensive con- 

 tributions to the zoological, geological, ethnological, and technological 

 collections. 



APPRECIATION BY FOREIGN NATIONS. 



The new methods of work and of museum arrangement, which have 

 grown lip here, have attracted much attention abroad. Mexico, in 

 1887, sent the entire collections of the National Natural History Mu- 

 seums, then just being founded, to Washington, in charge of two of her 

 principal naturalists, who passed six months at the National Museum 

 identifying their material and studying the methods of administration. 

 Costa Eica, forming a national museum, sent its director here for a six 

 months' course of study. 



Japan has sent the entire national collection of birds to the Museum 

 to be studied and reported upon by one of the naturalists of the Mu- 

 seum staff. 



Germany has been supplied with a complete set of i)lau8 and illustra- 

 tions of methods of administration at the request of the Director of the 

 National Zoological Museum. 



In 1883, at the Fisheries Exhibition in London, the methods of the 

 National Museum were strictly adhered to in the arrangement of the 

 display made by the United States. 



In 1888, in his address as president of the Anthropological Society 

 of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, General 

 Pitt-Eivers said that the American display at the Fishery Exhibition 

 was the only thing done in the true spirit of modern science in the 

 whole series of professedly scientific exhibitions held in London within 

 the past six years.* 



* The words of General Pitt-Rivers in 1(^88 are simply a repetition of what he said 

 in 1883, made stronger by the observations of five more years of exhibitions in Europe, 

 In 1883 he wrote to the London Times : 



Sir : In confirmation of the praise you justly bestow on the arrangement of the 

 United States department in the Fisheries Exhibition 1 beg to draw attention to the 



