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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION  849
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5. The Natural History Building is now crowded. Corridors even are filled with cases. Work rooms are too crowded to give adequate facilities to workers. For example, workers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose duty it is to examine insect specimens microscopically, are now crowded four to a window so that there is neither adequate space nor light for their studies. No storage is longer available for large objects.

6. To relieve this congestion which is yearly increasing, it is proposed to erect wings to the east and west of the building. These will be uniform with the existing structure and will carry the east extension nearly to 9th Street, and the west extension nearly to 12th Street. They have been approved in principle (a) by the Regents and Secretaries of the Smithsonian Institution; (b) by the Fine Arts Commission; (c) by the Bureau of the Budget; (d) by the President. Their cost has been approximately estimated at $6,500,000 by the Supervising Architect of the Treasury.

7. A bill authorizing a future appropriation not exceeding $6,500,000 for the extensions has passed the Senate and is pending in the House.

8. The need of these additions is already urgent. Authorization at this time will permit detailed plans to be drawn, but the building can not be completed, if now authorized, before 1933. By that time the present congested condition will have become much more serious.

PRESENTATION OF LANGLEY GOLD MEDALS.

The Secretary said that efforts had been made to fix a date for the presentation of the Langley Gold Medals to Admiral Byrd and (Posthumously) to Charles M. Manly; that the Executive Committee at a recent meeting had asked the Secretary to arrange for the presentation to Admiral Byrd at as early a date as was convenient to the Admiral, and to defer the Manly

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