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^[[D Flint 89 -90]]
^[[Mrs Y Please make 3 (2 carbon) copies]]
^[[Mrs Ray O.K. J.M.F. file]]
^[[ [[boxed]] E A [[/boxed]] ]]

Report on the Materia Medica Section in the U.S. National Museum.

During the past year the labors of the Curator^[[,]] with such clerical assistance as may have been available or necessary, have been devoted to the identification, arrangement, display, illustration, and discription of the individual specimens which make up the large mass of material already in hand;  to the classification and installation of new material; to the care and convenient arrangement of duplicate and reserve series; and to the consideration of ^[[such]] questions of identity or uses of drugs, as have been referred, from time to time, to this section.

The principal accessions have been: a collection (about 30 specimens) of East India drugs, received in exchange from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, England, and about 80 specimens of miscellaneous medicinal substances contributed by Messrs. W.H. Schieffelin & Co., of New York, to fill vacances in existing series. Both accessions have been installed and labelled.

The most important routine work has been the preparation of descriptive labels, wh^[[i]]ch work has been systematically and per^[[sis]]tently carried on during the year. Each label, in its preparation, involves the study of the specimen, the comparison of its physical characters with those laid down by the authorities, the determination of its sources, geographical, botanical, etc. and ^[[of]]its supposed medicinal properties^[[,]] and uses. The effort is made to select the most important and interesting facts that can be presented in the few lines appropriate to a Museum label, avoiding on the one hand that meagerness that gives the inquiring visitor nothing but a name, and, on the other, that [[strikethrough]] technical [[/strikethrough]] ^[[fullness of]] detail which discourages by its [[strikethrough]]amount[[/strikethrough]] ^[[length]], or confuses by its ^[[technical]]precision[[strikethrough]] of terms[[/strikethrough]]. 

Transcription Notes:
I will go back and review how to do transcriptions since this is my first time and see how to notate hand written notes or marked out areas.