REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 17 



large room above it, in which were stored the private library of Rev. 

 Dr. Johns, of Virginia, and the public library of Beaufort, S. C, de- 

 posited there at the request of Hon. Mr. Stanton, for preservation 

 until the end of the war; and third, in the attic, a large collection of 

 public documents and complete sets of the Smithsonian Reports, in- 

 tended for distribution. The effects of Smithson had but little in- 

 trinsic value, and were chiefly prized as mementoes of the founder of 

 the Institution. They consisted of a number of articles of chemical 

 and physical apparatus, such as were used by him in his perambula- 

 tory excursions, two small cabinets of minute specimens of miner- 

 als, a silver-plated dinner service, and a trunk filled with manu- 

 scripts. The portrait of Smithson while a student at Oxford, a me- 

 dallion likeness of him in bronze, his library, consisting of 150 vol- 

 umes, and a small painting were saved. The manuscripts consisted 

 principally of notes on scraps of paper, intended apparently for alpha- 

 betical arrangement in a common-place book, after the manner of a 

 philosophical dictionary. 



The losses in the north towers were the contents of the offices of 

 the Secretary, including the records and copies of the correspondence 

 of the Institution, the wood-cuts to illustrate the publications, the 

 steel plates of an expensive memoir, several boxes of stereotype 

 plates, a large number of manuscripts of the Secretary on scientific 

 subjects, four memoirs accepted for publication, about a hundred 

 volumes of valuable books from the library, used for constant and 

 immediate reference; a large number of copies of the Smithsonian 

 Reports and duplicate documents; the contents of the workshop, con- 

 sisting of a lathe, forge, a full set of tools, and an assortment of 

 hardware and materials for the construction and repair of apparatus; 

 and of the upper room of the highest tower, including the clock-work 

 of an anemometer for recording the direction and force of the wind. 

 Not only was this instrument itself lost, but all the records which had 

 been obtained by the use of it for the last seven years. Fortunately, 

 nearly all the other meteorological records, which were in a lower 

 room, were saved. 



The Indian portraits, as far as they were the likenesses of particu- 

 lar individuals, in most cases can never be reproduced, but we are 

 gratified to learn that the extensive collection of Mr. Catlin,of a sim- 

 ilar character, has been purchased in Europe by Mr. Harrison, of 

 Philadelphia, and will be rendered accessible to the student of eth- 

 nology. Besides this, there are in existence, particularly in Canada, 

 other portraits, sufficient in number and variety fully to illustrate the 

 2s 



