The name of the Smithsonian Institution is a household word throughout North America, and its fame is current wherever printed literature exists. Abroad it is regarded as the chief exponent of the scientific activities of the people of the United States, and the administrative scientific department of our government. At home, its actual relations to the administration are better understood, and it is looked upon in its proper capacity—that of an organization closely affiliated to the government and tenderly cherished by its officers, yet, in virtue of its independent foundation, independent of political favor, and ready to encourage, advise and coöperate with any public or private enterprise without the necessity of annual appeals to the congressional committees on appropriations. Visitors to the national capital usually carry away pleasant memories of the quiet old building among the trees in the mall, with its mediæval battlements and turrets of brown stone conspicuous from every point of view, and the multitude who enter its halls are at least impressed with the fact that the national treasure houses are becoming filled with valuable collections rather faster than the available money and space will allow to be properly arranged and displayed. Only a very few, however, of the four hundred thousand persons who visited the buildings last year can have had the opportunity to inspect the administrative offices or the scientific laboratories, and very few indeed of those who are acquainted with the general nature of the operations of the establishment, have the slightest conception of their meaning and importance.