REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 11 



Pitt-Rivers said that the American display at the Fishery Exhibition 

 was the only thing done in the true spirit of modern science in the 

 whole series of professedly scientific exhibitions held in London within 

 the past six years.* 



Such expressions of opinion, coupled with the. constant praise with 

 which European journals speak of the scientific work of our Govern- 

 ment departments, can not but be gratifying, and it should be a matter 

 of national pride to merit it. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE MUSEUM TO THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



The Smithsonian Institution, though it bears the name of a private 

 citizen and a foreigner, has been for nearly half a century one of the 

 principal rallying points of the scientific workers of America. It has 

 also been intimately connected with very many of the most important 

 scientific undertakings of the Government. 



Many wise and enlightened scholars have given to its service the best 

 years of their lives, and some of the most eminent scientific men, to 

 whom our country has given birth, have r>assed their entire lifetime in 

 work for its success. Its publications, six hundred and seventy in num- 

 ber, which when combined make up over one hundred dignified volumes, 

 are to be found in every important library in the world, and some of 

 them, it is safe to say, on the working-table of every scientific investi- 

 gator in the world Avho can read English. 



Through these books, through the reputation of the men who have 

 worked for it and through it, and through the good accomplished by its 

 system of international exchange, by means of which within the past 

 thirty-eight years more than 1,300,000 packages of books and other sci- 

 entific and literary materials have been distributed to every region of 

 the earth, it has acquired a reputation at least as far-reaching as that 

 of any other institution of learning in the world. 



* The words of General Pitt-Rivers in 1888 are simply a repetition of what he said 

 in 1883, made stronger hy the observations of five more years of exhibitions in 

 Europe. 



In 1883 he wrote to the London Times : 



Sir : In confirmation of the praise you justly bestow on the arrangement of the 

 United States department in the Fisheries Exhibition I beg to draw attention to the 

 fact that in the whole exhibition it is the only one which is arranged historically. 

 In the Chinese. Japanese, Scandinavian, and Dutch courts there are objects which 

 the scientific student of the arts of life may pick out and arrange in the proper order 

 in his own mind ; but in that of the United States, following the method adopted in 

 the National Museum in Washington, there has been attempted something more — to 

 bring the department into harmony with modern ideas. This gives to the exhibition 

 an interest which is apart from commerce, and au interest which is beyond the mere 

 requirements of fish culture, and it may be regarded as one out of many indications 

 of the way in which the enlightened Government of the United States mark their 

 appreciation of the demands of science. 



I have the honor to be, sir, yours obediently, 



A. Pitt-Rivers. 



