22 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY. 



prising the best treatises, chiefly on natural history and methods of 

 museum administration. It comprises 2,900 volumes, 18,000 pamphlets, 

 and 1,S00 portraits, autographs, and engravings. 



The total number of lots of specimens received during the year was 

 1,441, some of these containing several hundred each. These acces- 

 sions include more than 450,000 objects, and I would call special atten- 

 tion to this extraordinary increase, perhaps the largest during the last 

 fifteen years. This fact seems to establish in a marked degree the 

 popularity of the Museum and the general desire on the rjart of the 

 public to aid in building up its collections. The conditions existing 

 during the year have been peculiarly unfavorable for making special 

 effort to increase the collections, and this large addition to them must 

 be regarded as the result of a very earnest desire of persons interested 

 in the Museum to assist in promoting its objects. The number of speci- 

 mens now recorded in all the departments of the Museum is consider- 

 ably more than four millions. 



The Museum has continued its practice of carrying on exchanges of 

 specimens with museums and individuals in foreign countries. Among 

 the most important ones initiated or completed during the year 1898 

 may be mentioned those with the Imperial Eoyal Natural History 

 Museum, of Vienna; the Paleoutological Museum of the Eoyal Acad- 

 emy, Munich, Bavaria; the Natural History Society of New Brunswick, 

 St. John; the Branicki Museum, Warsaw, Bussia; the Zoological 

 Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg; the 

 Eoyal Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden, and the 

 Museum of Natural History, Geneva, Switzerland. 



A more detailed reference to these transactions may be found in the 

 Appendix. 



BUREAU OF AMEEIOAN ETHNOLOGY. 



Eesearches relating to the American Indians, conducted under the 

 Smithsonian Institution in accordance with the act of Congress, have 

 been continued by Maj. J. W. Powell, the Director of the Bureau, 

 assisted by Mr. W J McGee, Mr. F. W. Hodge, and other scientific col- 

 laborators, whose respective services will be found more fully detailed in 

 tbe director's report. The field operations have been extended into a 

 large number of States and Territories; and also incidentally into dis- 

 tricts of neighboring countries occupied by tribes affiliated with the 

 aborigines of the region now comprised in the United States. In the 

 office studies have been carried on of the field material, with a view to 

 defining those characteristics of primitive culture affecting relations 

 among the tribes. 



Tbe work of exploration has been conducted in several parts of the 

 United States. An examination was made into the shell mounds on the 

 coast of Maine, resulting, in the opinion of the director, in the identi- 

 fication of the Mound Builders with the tribes found on that coast at 

 the settlement of the country. From excavations in Mexico and Arizona 



