4 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



should lead to the strengthening of the bond of union between the 

 Institution and the National Museum, a bond which, although nomi- 

 nally the same as it was twenty-eight years ago, had, as a matter of fact, 

 become somewhat less definite and intimate. 



The relations of the Museum to the Interior Department, as they now 

 exist, are undefined and complicated, and it is important that early steps 

 should be taken to secure that definite control over the Museum, on the 

 part of the Begents of the Smithsonian Institution, which in later years 

 it became more and more evident that it was the desire of Professor 

 Baird to emphasize. 



On the 10 th of February, 1887, Professor Baird relinquished his 

 active administrative control of the Institution and the Museum into 

 the hands of the senior Assistant Secretary, who was at that time 

 designated Acting Secretary; and from that time forward his failing 

 strength prevented him from further efforts in its behalf. In the midst 

 of his illness, however, he found time in July to arrange for a collecting 

 expedition from Wood's Holl to Nantucket, for the purpose of obtaining 

 a collection of sharks, and the letter which he wrote at that time shows 

 that the Museum was in his mind to the last. 



During the same summer he took advantage of a long-cherished plan 

 for sending a Museum expedition to the islands in the Gulf of St. Law- 

 rence to search for the remains of the long extinct Great Auk, by 

 sending two collectors upon the Fish Commission schooner Grampus, 

 which went to that region for the purpose of investigating the fish- 

 eries.* 



B.— THE MUSEUM STAFF. 



Few changes have been made during the year in the arrangement of 

 the Museum staff. Prof. O. G. Marsh, of Yale College, whose high 

 reputation as a paleontologist is familiar to all, and who has for many 

 years been in charge of the vertebrate paleontological work of the U. S. 

 Geological Survey, was early iu the year ap'pointed curator of the 

 department of Vertebrate Fossils. Mr. S. B. Koehler, of Koxbury, a 

 well-known authority upon the art of engraving, and custodian of the 

 Gray Collection in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, has undertaken 

 to give a portion of his time to the arrangement of the collections of 

 engravings, and has been appointed acting curator of the section of 

 Graphic Arts. 



Mr. A. Howard Clark has been requested to undertake the editorial 

 w T ork in connection with the Proceedings and Bulletin of the Museum, 

 by this arrangement relieving Dr. Bean, who, since 1875, has performed 

 this duty in addition to that of curator of Fishes. 



The thirty-one departments and sections now recognized in the Mu- 

 seum are administrated by twenty-six curators and acting curators, 

 of whom nine receive salaries from the Museum appropriation, while 



* A report upon the results of this expedition will be published in the report for 



1888. 



