REPOET OF THE SECRETARY. 3 



duties connected with the bureaus of the Institution other than the 

 National Museum, be approved. 



ADMINISTRATION. 



The present writer has been occupied during his tenure of ofiBce as 

 Secretary much more with administrative than with purely scieutific 

 duties, which latter have been relegated to moments of comparative 

 leisure. In the pursuit of duties in the past years, as executive officer 

 of the Regents, he has endeavored to improve the business methods in 

 use in the Institution for its correspondence, its relations to its bureaus, 

 and in some measure for the details of its finance. It is perhaps well 

 to speak briefly here of the system which is followed in the exx)endi- 

 tures of the Institution, which are in the main like those of other 

 Government bureaus with some slight modifications as regards the 

 Institution's own practice. 



The Secretary is by law the custodian of the funds of the Institu- 

 tion, consisting at i)resent of moneys deposited in the United States 

 Treasury and of certain bonds, held by the Eegents through him under 

 the instructions of the permanent committee on the administration of 

 bequests and their investment, consisting of the executive committee 

 and the Secretary. 



The Eevised Statutes of the United States, section 5593, provide : 



Whenever money is required for the payment of the debts or perform- 

 ance of the contracts of the Institution, incurred or entered into in 

 conformity with the provisions of this title, or for making the pur- 

 chases and executing the objects authorized by this title, the Board of 

 Eegents, or the executive committee thereof, may certify to the chan- 

 cellor and secretary of the Board that such sum of money is required, 

 whereupon they shall examine the same, and, if they shall approve 

 thereof, shall certify the same to the proper officer of the Treasury for 

 payment. 



In practice, the Chancellor and the Secretary of the Institution make 

 a written requisition upon the Secretary of the Treasury twice a year 

 for the semi-annual interest on the fund, and this sum is held in the 

 Treasury subject only to the order of the Secretary, Money is not, as 

 a rule, kept on hand or drawn except for the j)ayment of a specific 

 account, while at the same time it has been the practice of the present 

 Secretary, as of his predecessors, neither to receive nor pay personally 

 any moneys of the Institution, but to perform such transactions through 

 a bonded disbursing officer of the Government, who is also the account- 

 ant of the Institution. The Secretary, as the disbursing officer of the 

 Institution, never makes payments in cash, but only through checks 

 prepared by the accountant. The actual course of an ordinary account 

 is as follows : 



Every purchase is preceded by a requisition which is approved by 

 the Secretary, except in certain excepted cases of expenditure of a 

 very minute amount. Upon this approved requisition an order is 

 issued by the Assistant Secretary, and when the bill is rendered it is 



