8 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1684. 



numerous past investigations. This is especially the case with those 

 materials which have served as a foundation for the numerous govern- 

 mental reports upon the resources of the United States. Types of in- 

 vestigations made outside of the Museum are also incorporated. 



2. It is a museum of research, by reason of the policy which aims to 

 make its coutents serve as fully as possible as a stimulus to and a fouu- 

 dation for the studies of scientific investigators. Research is a neces- 

 saiy part of the work, in order that the collections may be properly 

 identified and arrauged. Its officers are selected for their, capacity as 

 investigators, as well as for their ability as custodians, and its treasures 

 are open to the use of auy trustworthy student. 



3. It is an educational museum of the broadest type, by reason of its 

 policy of illustrating by specimens every group of natural objects and, 

 so far as it may prove practicable, such other collections as may be 

 found useful for the instruction of the public which are explained by 

 displaying descriptive labels adapted to the popular mind, and by its 

 policy of distributing its publications and its named series of duplicates. 



4. THE DEVELOPMENT OF TH'E MUSEUM IDEA. 



Periods in the history of the Museum.— The history of the National Mu- 

 seum may be divided into three periods : First, that from the foundation 

 of the Smithsonian Institution to 1857, during which time specimens 

 were collected purely and solely to serve as materials for research, no 

 special efforts being made to exhibit them to the public or to utilize 

 them except as a foundation for scientific description and theory. Sec- 

 ond, the period from 1857, when the Institution assumed the custody of 

 the " National Cabinet of Curiosities," to 1876. During this period the 

 Museum became a place of deposit for scientific material which had 

 already been studied, this material, so far as convenient, being exhib- 

 ited to the public, and, so far as practicable, made to serve an educa- 

 tional purpose. Third, the present period, beginning in the year 1876, 

 in which interval the Museum has entered more fully into the addi- 

 tional task of gathering collections and exhibiting them on account of 

 their value from an educational standpoint. * 



In the first period, the main object of the Museum was scientific re- 

 search; in the second, the establishment became a museum of record 

 as well as of research; while in the third period is growing up the 

 idea of public education. As soon as a judiciously selected series of 

 objects from the material already within the walls of the Museum can 

 be displayed properly to the Museum visitors, the National Museum of 

 the United States will have commenced to fulfill all the demands which 

 are likely ever to be made upon it. 



The three ideas of scientific research, record, and education, co-opera- 

 tive and mutually helpful as they are, are essential to the development 

 of any comprehensive and philosophically organized museum. Materials 

 are gathered together that they may serve as. a basis for scientific 



