REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 41 



furnishing the materials for ascertaining the uses of the implements of 

 the Stone Age found id the ancient mounds, since many of them with 

 perhaps slight modification are in use at the present time among the 

 more remote Indians of the western portion of this country. For exam- 

 ple, pointed stone implements found in the mounds which have been 

 thought to be arrow and javelin points, are now employed as knives, 

 to which wooden handles are attached by means of a vegetable cement, 

 and from the transmission of usages we may confidently assume that 

 similar handles, long since decayed, were also originally attached to like 

 implements of undoubted ancient origin. 



The subject of ethnology has received a very great impetus through 

 the appropriation of Congress for the display of illustrations at the 

 Centennial, circulars having been distributed, requesting the corres- 

 pondents of the Institution to aid in collecting specimens and to give 

 information as to the existence of special collections, from which unique 

 specimens could be borrowed for copying in plaster. The Institution 

 has also engaged the services of Dr. Rau, of New York, the well-known 

 ethnologist, to classify and arrange the whole collection in the National 

 Museum, and to prepare a descriptive catalogue for publication. He has 

 commenced with the classification of the specimens of the Stone Age, and 

 has nearly completed this part of the general work. In this classifica- 

 tion it has been thought proper to separate the objects belonging to 

 times anterior to the occupation of the continent by Europeans, from 

 those which have been used since that period. The first archaeological 

 series more particularly comprises objects found in mounds and other 

 burial-places of early date, in caves, shell-heaps, &c, or, in other words, 

 those which cannot with certainty be ascribed to tribes still in exist- 

 ence, or which have become extinct within historical times. 



The second, or more strictly ethnological, series, consists of objects ob- 

 tained from existing native tribes, and contains almost every article 

 tending to illustrate the domestic life, hunting, fishing, games, warfare, 

 navigation — in short, every phase of Indian existence that can be exhib- 

 ited by tangible objects. 



An account of what has been added to this department will be found 

 in the report on the Museum by Prof. Baird, and also in the Appendix. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



The Institution, as in former years, has been in harmonious co-opera- 

 tion with the Department of Agriculture, the Army Medical Museum, 

 and the Corcoran Art Gallery. With the first it has deposited plants 

 and other articles relating to agriculture ; to the second it has trans- 

 ferred a large number of articles pertaining to comparative anatomy 

 and materia medica, and has received in return ethnological specimens ; 

 in the third, the Corcoran Art Gallery, it has deposited a number of en- 

 gravings. 



The Secretary of the Institution being one of the trustees of the Art- 



