REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 17 



B.— ORGANIZATION AND SCOPE OF THE MUSEUM. 



The National Museum is under the direction of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution, which is governed by an establishment consisting of the 

 President of the United States and his Cabinet, the Commissioner of 

 Patents, and the Board of Regents, which latter is composed of the 

 Vice President of the United States, Chief Justice of the United States, 

 three members of the Senate, three members of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, and six other citizens not members of Congress, two of 

 whom are residents of the city of Washington. 



The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution is by law the " keeper 

 of the collections." The staff at the present time is composed of the 

 Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in charge of the 

 National Museum and thirty-two curators and acting curators, twenty- 

 two of whom receive no salary from the Museum appropriation. There 

 are also eleven administrative departments. 



PRINCIPAL SOURCES OF THE COLLECTIONS. 



The collections of the Museum are made up, in large part, of the fol- 

 lowing materials : 



(1) The natural history and anthropological collections, accumulated 

 since 1850 by the efforts of the officers and correspondents of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. 



(2) The collections of the Wilkes exploring expedition, the Perry 

 expedition to Japan, and other naval expeditions. 



(3) The collections of the scientific officers of the Pacific Railroad 

 survey, the Mexican boundary survey, and of the surveys carried on 

 by the Engineer Corps of the Army. 



(4) The collections of the United States geological surveys under the 

 direction of United States geologists Hayden, King, and Powell. 



(5) The collections of the U. S. Fish Commission. 



(6) The gifts by foreign governments to the Museum or to the Presi- 

 dent or other public officers of the United States, who are forbidden 

 by law to retain such gifts in their private possessions. 



(7) The collections made by the United States to illustrate the ani- 

 mal and mineral resources, the fisheries, and the ethnology of the 

 native races of the country on the occasion of the International Exhi- 

 bition at Philadelphia in 1876, the fishery collections displayed by the 

 United States at the International Fisheries Exhibition at Berlin in 

 1880 and at London in 1883, and the collections obtained from various 

 local expositions, as for instance the New Orleans Cotton Centennial 

 Exposition in 1884 and 1885 and the Cincinnati Exposition in 1887. 



(8) The collections given by the governments of the several foreign 

 nations, thirty in number, which participated in the exhibition at Phil- 

 adelphia in 1876. 



H. Mis. 129, pt. 2 2 



