JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. XV 



The buildings had been visited by 200,000 persons during the past 

 year, and a very large number of specimens, accurately named and 

 labeled, have been sent out to other museums and institutions through- 

 out the United States. It should be said, however, that those who are 

 interested in the Museum see with a feeling of real distress that, with 

 all that it is doing, it is compelled to come short of its functions as a 

 national institution, from the fact that such large collections of material 

 gathered on the North American continent are being carried abroad 

 for the want of means to retain them at home, and that desirable col- 

 lections in every other field are constantly slipping out of our grasp. 

 European museums have spent during the last year hundreds of 

 thousands of dollars in availing themselves of the fast diminishing 

 opportunities for making collections of material objects representing 

 the work of the primitive races of this continent, while the entire sum 

 of money available here for this purpose has been $3,725. Notwith- 

 standing the great opportunities offered at the close of the Chicago 

 Exposition, within the past year the new Field Columbian Museum 

 had expended probably more than $500,000 in the purchase of collec- 

 tions, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York not 

 less than $100,000. 



The Secretary went on to say that he need hardly recall that the 

 Zoological Park, as originally sanctioned by the Regents, was a national 

 and not a local measure. It was to be a great preserve of certain animal 

 races of the continent — like, for instance, the buffalo — and was to do 

 work which, for reasons already explained, the great national parks of 

 the West could not do so well. This was to be its primary function, and 

 recreation a subordinate one. Indirectly, if not through formal legisla- 

 tion, the direction in which the park is tending is more that of the 

 ordinary zoological garden, where entertainment is a principal feature, 

 than in that of the primary object. In spite of this the park has pre- 

 served, as far as it can, the lines of the original purpose. The buffalo, 

 for example, are breeding in captivity in a way only possible in such 

 paddocks as can be provided in this large reserve, while others of the 

 great races are being sheltered, and the park is, though in a limited 

 measure, filling its place as a city of refuge for these vanishing animal 

 peoples. The Regents will be glad to know that a secondary legitimate 

 object of the gardens is being most amply filled, for, to use a common 

 expression, it is becoming like "the lungs of the city," since, from its 

 position, it is accessible to the poor as well as to the rich, and is for the 

 health and recreation of every citizen ; and he would mention in striking 

 evidence of the public appreciation of this most important feature, and 

 as an evidence that the Regents' large intent has not wholly failed of 

 its purpose, that the park, even in its inchoate condition, has been 

 visited by as many as 30,000 people in a single day. 



The Secretary continued that the work of the Bureau of Ethnology 

 lies largely in collecting and preserving material for the study of the 



