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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION  593 
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MADE BY BAKER-VAWTER CO. 
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[[underlined]] Expeditions [[/underlined]]

[[underlined]] Archeological Expedition to China [[/underlined]]. The archeological expedition sent to China last February under the joint auspices of the Freer Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and under the immediate direction of Mr. Carl W. Bishop, Associate Curator of the Freer Gallery, seems already to have paved the way for a far better approach to the problems of Chinese archeology than has ever existed before.

In so far as the acquisitive faculties of European and American museums and collections have hitherto influenced archeological discovery in China, their effect, with few exceptions, has been to emphasize the commercial value of objects found, to encourage among the Chinese themselves surreptitious pillaging of ancient sites as a money-making venture, and thus practically to compel the spread of wholly misleading statements as to the provenance of antiquities so brought to light, in order that the vandals concerned might more surely escape detection. One result of these conditions may be patly seen in the progressive destruction of well known monuments; another, in the fact that among the many Chinese sculptures, bronzes, jades, potteries and the like now in the possession of western museums and collectors, the ultimate sources and, in consequence, the full archeological significance of comparatively few are known. 

There are, however, in China today, as there have always been, many accomplished scholars whose racial veneration for antiquity has helped to make of them respectful collectors of their country's arts and serious students of her history; indeed, there is no culture of equal age which has been so abundantly documented from century to century and in all its aspects as that of the Chinese. [[initialed]] CDW [[/initials]]