REPORT ON THE DEPARTMENT OF PREHISTORIC ANTHROPOLOGY IN 

 THE U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



By Thomas Wilson, Curator. 



Dr. Charles Rau, for many years the curator of this department, en- 

 tered the service of the Smithsonian Institution in 1875, and was 

 placed in charge of the preparation of an ethnological exhibit for the 

 Centennial Exhibition in 1876, and he was subsequently appointed 

 Curator of the Department of Archteology in the National Museum. 

 Dr. Eau had been in j^oor health during the winter of 188G-'87 and 

 had partially recovered, but was suddenly attacked in July and went 

 to the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he died on July 

 25, from the effects of a surgical operation. His body was interred in 

 Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, where a modest stone, bearing a suit- 

 able inscription, has been erected to his memory. 



Dr. Kau bequeathed to the National Museum his library, consisting 

 of 715 bound volumes, and J ,722 volumes unbound, his archaeologic 

 and ethnologic collections, comprising 2,000 specimens, and his collec- 

 tion of minerals and fossils. 



The books comprising the library are now being arranged and cata- 

 logued, and will form the nucleus of a sectional library in the Depart- 

 ment. The archaeologic specimens will, so far as possible, be kept 

 together and displayed under the name of their donor. 



Almost the entire life of Dr. Eau was spent in archaeologic studies. 

 He was faithful, zealous, and devoted to his science. 



At the time of his death Dr. Eau was engaged in the preparation of 

 a work which he had called "The Typical Forms of North American 

 Prehistoric Relics of Stone and Copper in the U. S. National Museum." 

 This was intended by him to be an enlargement of his work "Archaeo- 

 logic Collections of U. S, National Museum," and published April, 1876, 

 as Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 287, the edition of which 

 had been exhausted. It was to have been followed by a larger and 

 more complete work which, with its illustrations, should represent the 

 entire field of American Prehistoric Anthropology. This he intended 

 to be the magnum opus of his life. 



The line upon which the work left by Dr. Eau proceeded during his 

 life-time has not been changed except in some details. It seems de- 



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