Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/495

Rh scholars, as well as by purchase, a library has been gathered of enormous value, now numbering over three hundred thousand titles. As already stated, it is merged in the Library of Congress, with the exception of a small collection for the use of the officers, partly housed in the Norman building and partly in the Museum. In the magnificent library building now approaching completion on Capitol Hill, the Smithsonian will have a separate hall for its deposit.

at first occupied the larger halls in the Norman building, and since 1858 special appropriations have been made by Congress for its maintenance; but, outgrowing its quarters, an independent building was erected by Congressional aid in 1881. This building has an available floor space of one hundred thousand square feet, but has been greatly overcrowded for many years. The director of the museum, who is also Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, G. Brown Goode, LL. D., is assisted by thirty-three curators in charge of as many departments. These are: arts and industries, embracing twelve sections; materia medica, animal products, naval architecture, fisheries, foods, historical collections, coins and medals, transportation and engineering. Oriental antiquities, graphic arts, forestry, physical apparatus, helminthology, ethnology, American prehistoric pottery, prehistoric anthropology, mammals, birds, birds' eggs, reptiles and batrachians, fishes, vertebrate fossils, mollusks, insects, marine invertebrates, comparative anatomy, invertebrate fossils—paleozoic, mesozoic, and cenozoic—fossil plants, botany, minerals, geology. This mere catalogue of departments shows the prodigious range of subjects, the total number of specimens being more than three and a half millions. Nearly a quarter million of specimens were added in the twelve months ending 1892. The growth of the museum is due to many sources; these comprise the results of exchanges both abroad and at home, explorations by different departments of Government and by the Smithsonian Institution, collections secured through gift of foreign governments, and, most important of all, the collections obtained from several local and international exhibitions, in which the museum has always taken an active part.

An important activity of the museum is its generous distribution of duplicate specimens in natural history to scientific societies, colleges, and other educational institutions throughout the United States. Between 1871 and 1890, two hundred and seventy-eight thousand specimens were so distributed.

The museum is a favorite place of resort on the part of residents in, and visitors to, the Capital. In the year ending June 30, 1893, over three hundred thousand persons availed themselves of its privileges. Their examination of the objects is much