53 
history material is worth keeping for investigative purposes. In most 
cases fresh material can easily be secured, if required, and is better for 
study. Where serial collections are needed, they are needed close at hand 
and not in a distant Museum building, already crowded and without good 
laboratory facilities. The only other incentive is proprietary interest. 
The Geological Survey alone has had this proprietary interest and has had 
its offices and laboratories in the Museum, and it alone has given any 
considerable effort towards developing the Museum. Its active interest 
in the Museum in future may be expected to correspond with the amount 
of these benefits. For the same reasons it is not unlikely that certain 
other Government organizations occupied with systematic natural history 
would develop a similar active interest in the Museum if brought into 
immediate contact with it. 
(2) Quite a different condition obtains in respect to exhibition work. 
The Museum affords excellent opportunities for advertising the operations 
of all Government organizations that are concerned with the natural 
resources of the country. Also these Government organizations are able 
to render invaluable help to the Museum in preparing exhibits that are 
intended to illustrate the economic aspects of the materials displayed. 
They can bring to the aid of the limited and purely scientific Museum 
staff a large number of scientists well acquainted with the uses and methods 
of treatment and manufacture of minerals, plants, and other natural 
materials. This has been well exemplified recently in an exhibit of coals 
and coal products assembled for the Museum by an officer of the Geological 
Survey. Comparison of this exhibit with similar exhibits in other museums 
in America indicates it to be unexcelled in completeness, scientific and 
technical accuracy, and educational value. 
The Museum has profited by this kind of co-operation from the 
Geological Survey since its inception. Up to the present it has felt little 
need for help of the kind from other organizations, but it can undoubtedly 
obtain such help when it is required. Within the last year one organization 
in another department offered to co-operate in making a permanent display 
in the Museum to illustrate the branch of natural science with which it 
deals, and another organization accepted an invitation to do likewise. 
However, the scope of such co-operation is more limited than might be 
supposed. The Museum comprises, or will in time comprise, the following 
sections: anthropology; biology, which includes sub-sections for mammals, 
birds, insects, aquatic animals, and plants; geography; geology; mineralogy; 
and palaeontology. Anthropology and the subsections for mammals and 
birds have little or no economic bearing and are not dealt with from that 
angle by any other Government department. No large amount of co- 
operation from other departments is available on these subjects, nor is 
it needed, since the Museum already has well-equipped staffs to deal 
with these subjects. All of the remaining six subjects have more or less 
important economic applications, for the investigation of which special 
Government organizations exist. Insects exert an influence upon agri- 
culture which requires the attention of an Entomological branch in the 
Department of Agriculture. The Department of Marine and Fisheries 
gives practical consideration to the aquatic forms of life. Various economic 
aspects of botany are dealt with by the Department of Agriculture and by 
the Forestry branch of the Department of the Interior. The scientific 
and practical sides of geography come under the attention of the Geodetic 
