40 EEPORT OF THE SECEETAEY. 



Museum. — The portion of the Smithsonian income which can be 

 devoted to a museum, and the $4,000 per annum appropriated by 

 Congress, would not together be sufficient to establish and sustain a 

 general collection of specimens of the natural history of the world. 

 It will, therefore, be the policy of the Institution, unless other means 

 are provided, to confine the collections principally to illustrations of 

 the products of the North American continent. For this purpose 

 efforts have been made, principally through the various exploring 

 expeditions, to obtain a large number of specimens of all the species 

 of the different kingdoms of nature found in North America; and at 

 this time the collection under charge of the Institution is more exten- 

 sive in number and variety than any other which has ever before been 

 made relative to this portion of the globe. It is not in accordance 

 with the general organization of the Institution to form a museum 

 of single specimens, interesting only for their rareness, but to collect 

 a large number of specimens of each species, particularly of such as 

 have not been described, and to distribute these among the several 

 naturalists who may have the industry, ability, and the desire to study 

 them; the primary object of the Institution, namely, the increase of 

 the existing sum of knowledge in this case, as in all others, being 

 kept prominently in view. 



The Institution has now become the curator of the collections of 

 natural history and ethnology of the government, and by law is 

 empowered, as it appears to me, to make the same disposition of the 

 materials contained in these collections as it does of those procured at 

 its own expense ; the design will be to render the specimens in 

 the greatest degree serviceable to the advance of knowledge. The 

 museum now consists of the following collections, of which, according 

 ^o Professor Baird, about one-fifth were brought from the Patent 

 Office: 



First, those of the naval expeditions; second, those of the United 

 States geological surveys; third, those of the boundary surveys; fourth, 

 those of surveys for railroad routes to the Pacific; fifth, of miscellane- 

 ous expeditions under the War and Navy Departments; sixth, those 

 of miscellaneous collections presented or deposited by societies and 

 individuals; and, lastly, of an extensive series of the results of explora- 

 tions prosecuted by the Institution itself. By far the greater portion 

 of the whole has been made under the stimulus and immediate direc- 

 tion of the Smithsonian Institution. A number of the special collec- 

 tions are still in the hands of those to whom they were intrusted for 

 scientific investigation and description. The arrangement of the cases 



