REPORT UPON THE CONDITION AND PROGRESS OF THE U. S. NATIONAL 

 MUSEUM DURING THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1887, 



A.— GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



The report now presented relates to the period between June 30, 1886, 

 and July 1, 1887. Before the completion of the report the Museum had 

 suffered the loss of him who had been for ten years its official head, and 

 who, from the very beginning of the Museum work of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, had been its chief administrator and promoter. Although 

 it is proper that any extended statement concerning Professor Baird 

 and his relation to the Museum should be reserved for the report for 

 the year in which his death occurred, it seems to be proper to refer in 

 this place to the beginning of his protracted illness, in the fall of 1886, 

 and to the year of sadness which followed, in which none of his assist- 

 ants and associates could possibly feel the usual enthusiasm or interest 

 in the work in which he had always been their leader as well as their 

 director and counselor. 



The work of the Museum was carried forward during the year in the 

 customary way, and the amount of actual routine work accomplished 

 has perhaps not been less than in previous years.. There is, however, 

 less of interest to chronicle in the way of new enterprises, and scarcely 

 more will be attempted at this time than the customary statement of 

 the progress of administrative routine. 



One of the last official acts of the late Secretary was to request the 

 Board of Regents, at its meeting on the 12th of January, 1887, to ap- 

 point two Assistant Secretaries of the Smithsonian Institution, who 

 should relieve the Secretary of a portion of his official duties. By the 

 appointment of Professor Langley to the position of Assistant Secre- 

 tary in charge of Exchanges, Publications, and Library, and of myself 

 as Assistant Secretary in charge of the National Museum, it was the 

 definite purpose of the late Secretary to effect a return to the system 

 of organization which existed at the time of his first connection with 

 the Smithsonian Institution in 18 ">0, when the senior Assistant Secre- 

 tary was officially in charge of the Library, and the junior Assistant 

 Secretary — himself— -in charge of the Museum collections. It was Pro- 

 fessor Baird's earnest desire that, so far as the Museum was concerned, 

 the appointment of* its executive officer to an assistant secretaryship 



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