REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 9 



which was a national misfortuue, was taken from the city of Washing- 

 ton and sold to the British Museum for $10,000, no American institu- 

 tion having money available for its purchase. 



Instances of this kind occur nearly every month in every year. 



The National Museum has had the option for several years of the 

 purchase at cost of $80,000 of a collection of miuerals, which once 

 acquired would enable its mineralogical department to rank among the 

 first in the world. Congress has never been asked to make an appro- 

 priation for its purchase, simply because of unwillingness to ask for that 

 which might not be granted. Minerals, having a money value, can 

 readily be sold, and are not very often given to the Museum, and the 

 poverty of its mineralogical collection is by no means creditable to the 

 nation. 



The Museum receives many valuable gifts from Government officials 

 abroad, especially from those in the consular and diplomatic service, 

 and in the Navy. 



If the actual cost of gathering specimens could be paid, the time and 

 experience of these men would gladly be given gratuitously. In this 

 way, by the expenditure of a few thousands each year, extensive and 

 important additions might be made to the national collections. 



THE NECESSITY FOR A NEW MUSEUM BUILDING. 



The National Museum is now approaching an important crisis in its 

 history. Its future will depend upon the action of Congress in grant- 

 ing it an additional building, for without more room its growth can not 

 but be in large degree arrested. 



The necessity for additional room is constantly increasing, and sev- 

 eral of the collections, to wit, transporatiou and engineering, fishes, rep- 

 tiles, birds' eggs, mollusks, insects, marine invertebrates, vertebrate 

 and invertebrate fossils, fossil and recent plants, are in some instances 

 wholly unprovided for, and in others only in a very inadequate degree. 



In the main hall of the Smithsonian buildiug is still exhibited the 

 collection of birds. A few cases containing birds' eggs and shells have 

 recently been arranged along the center of this hall. 



Eleven of the departments in the National Museum have no space 

 assigned to them in the Museum building, solely on account of its 

 crowded condition. The collection of prehistoric anthropological ob- 

 jects remains installed on the second floor of the Smithsonian building. 

 The collections of the remaining ten departments can not be exhibited 

 or even properly arranged and classified without more room. These 

 collections are at present stored in the attics and basements of the 

 Smithsonian and Armory buildings, and are inaccessible for study and 

 for the other purposes for which they were obtained. The specimens 

 comprising these collections are not simply objects of natural history, 

 possessing an abstract interest to the student, but represent the appli- 

 cation of natural objects to the industries, and, as such, are of great 



