REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1925 9 



The relation of the National Museum to the general public is 

 divided between two major services. Each year a vast number of 

 persons come to Washington to view the seat of our National 

 Government. For these the National Museum offers properly pre- 

 pared and labeled exhibits of the most varied nature that serve to 

 entertain, or to educate and improve the mind, according to the mood 

 of the visitor. The total number of visitors recorded for the fiscal 

 year 1925 was more than twice the total population of Washington. 

 The public exhibits are so varied that it is not practicable to 

 enumerate them in entirety. In the halls of anthropology are shown 

 specimens dealing with primitive man and his evolution, in biologj^ 

 are exhibited types of all known forms of life, and in geology and 

 paleontology there may be seen exhibits of minerals, stones, and 

 strange, grotesque fossils, the latter often of forms beyond the 

 imagination of the ordinary individual. Exhibits in arts and 

 industries include display in the manufacture of mineral products, 

 of mechanical devices in locomotion, aviation, lighting, and com- 

 munication, of textiles', chemistry, foods and medicines, and of 

 graphic arts, as writing, printing, and photography. Exhibits in 

 history include great displays of military and naval objects, with an 

 especially complete exhibit from the World War, of coins, stamps 

 and the many things concerned with the history and development of 

 the United States as a Nation. 



In addition to the public exhibits there are stored in the labora- 

 tories series of specimens in all branches that are used in serious 

 researches by specialists, American and foreign, in all lines of human 

 knowledge, many of whom come to the Museum for the express 

 purpose of working with these collections. New facts, many of them 

 of great importance, are the constant outcome of studies made by 

 the staff, or by visiting scientists to whom the collections are made 

 freely available. Hundreds of specimens are forwarded as loans 

 to investigators working at a distance to assist them in their re- 

 searches. 



Studies of the collections, comprising additions to human 

 knowledge, are issued to the public in the publications of the 

 Museum, a service to all of the highest value. It may be safely 

 said that nearly all biological textbooks, encyclopaedias, and other 

 similar reference works published in recent years have been based 

 in part upon information emanating from the National Museum. 



Visitors to the halls of the Museum frequently include groups or 

 classes of students brought here by their instructors to view special 

 exhibits as a basis for or to supplement their regular class work. 

 Personal examination of objects under study is of great and recog- 

 nized value in impressing on the memory definite images that are 



