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[[preprinted]] SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
Washington, D.C 20560
U.S.A.  [[preprinted]]

January 2, 1986

Professor Neil Harris
Department of History
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, Illinois 60637

Dear Neil:

Thank you for the comprehensive and able summation of the Smithsonian Council's reflections on the matters before it at the annual meeting in October of this year.  As usual, it is probably fair to say that the truly essential product was the Council's interaction with the Smithsonian staff at the meeting itself, and I was particularly gratified that participation on our side this year was so general and intense.  But it is also the case that the report you provide is no mere formalism.  Was it Samuel Johnson who said that a prospective hanging "concentrates the mind"?  The fact that there will be a report concentrates the Council's collective mind, and gives the occasion a significance among my colleagues here that the Council may not fully appreciate.  You words have accordingly been searches for nuances you may never have intended, although I seem to recall a past occasion or two in Chicago when I heard you slip in a nuance here and there so delicately that most of even your most avid hearers may well have missed them completely.

Turning directly to the substance of the awed and grateful response that all of us here at the Smithsonian owe you and your colleagues, the Council's visit to the National Zoo was valuable on several counts.  The assessment of research and public programs there as worthy and prospering is certainly useful for me, and does credit to Zoo staff and the leadership of Michael Robinson.  The Council's perspicacity, when confronted with a major program in so short a time, continues to impress old hands here, as well as those of us never to the Smithsonian scene.

Research efforts at the Zoo are noteworthy.  The comments on the need to balance fundamental and applied research, with a sense of tilt towards animal maintenance and propagation, were of particular interest.  Dr. Robinson, however, does  part company with you on this point, maintaining that the present situation is [[end page\\