12 REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



Such expressions of opinion, coupled with the constant praise with 

 which European journals speak of the scientific work of our Govern- 

 ment departments, can not but be gratifying-, and it should be a matter 

 of national pride to merit it. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE MUSEUM TO THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



The Smithsonian Institution, though it bears the name of a private 

 citizen and a foreigner, has been for nearly half a century one of the 

 principal rallying points of the scientific workers of America. It has 

 also been intimately connected with very many of the most important 

 scientific undertakings of the Government. 



Many wise and enhghtened scholars have given to its service the best 

 years of their lives, and some of the most eminent scientific men our 

 country has given birth to have passed their entire lifetime in work for 

 its success. Its publications, six hundred and seventy in number, which 

 when combined make up over one hundred dignified volumes, are to be 

 found in every important library in the world, and some of them, it is 

 safe to say, on the working table of every scientific investigator in the 

 world who can read English. 



Through these books, through the reputation of the men who have 

 worked for it and through it, and through the good accomplished by its 

 system of international exchange, by means of which within the i)ast 

 thirty-eight years 1,262,114 packages of books and other scientific and 

 literary materials have been distributed to every region of the earth, 

 it has acquired a reputation at least as far reaching as that of any other 

 institution of learning in the world. 



It is therefore representative of what is deemed in other lands the 

 chief glory of this nation, for whatever may be thought in other coun- 

 tries of American art, of American literature, American institutions 

 generally, the science of America is accepted without question as equal 

 to the best. 



In the scientific journals of Great Britain and other European coun- 

 tries, the reader iinds most appreciative reviews of the scientific pub- 

 lications of the Smithsonian, the Museum, the Bureau of Ethnology, 

 the Geological Survey, the Department of Agriculture, and the Fish 

 Commission, and they are constantly holding up the Government of 

 the United States, as an example to their own, of what governments 

 shoidd do for the support of their scientific institutions. 



fact that iu the whole exhibition it is the only one which is arranged historically. ' 

 In the Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavian, and Dutch courts there are objects which 

 the scientific student of the arts of life may jnck out and arrange in the proper order 

 in his own mind; but in that of the United States, following the method adopted in 

 the National Musenm in Washington, there has been attempted something more — 

 to bring the department into harmony with modern idieas. This gives to the exhi- 

 bition an interest which is apart from commerce, and an interest which is beyond 

 the mere requirements of fish culture, and it may be regarded as one out of many in- 

 dications of the way in which the enlightened Government of the United States mark 

 their appreciation of the demands of science. 



I have the honor to be, sir, yours obediently, 



A, PlTT-RlVERS. 



