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XII JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 

searches," and he wished it understood - not as a matter of criticism, but in explanation - that the Executive Committee made no examination or inspection of the accounts of the Bureau of Ethnology. These were exclusively under the control - according to the acts of Congress making the appropriations - "of the [[italics]]Secretary[[italics]] of the Smithsonian Institution." In this respect a difference existed between the duty of the committee in regard to these accounts and those of the Museum or of other trusts commiteed to the Institution, of which careful examination was made of every voucher. 

The Secretary stated that he would be very willing to be relieved of the weighty responsibility and would be gratified if it could be assumed by the Regents. He had no desire to assume a personal responsibility in regard to the appropriation referred to, and he hope that in the future it might be found possible to make the appropriations to the [[italics]]"Smithsonian Institution"[[/italics]] instead of to the [[italics]]"Secretary"[[/italics]].

Dr. Welling remarked that the Executive Committee does not care to share this responsibility.

Dr. Coppée said he though it the [[italics]]duty[[/italics]] of the Regents to share in this; and that if the language of the act was so doubtful, and if in relation to one trust it was the duty of the Secretary to confer with the Executive Committee, he though that in others, although the Regents or the Institution were not specially mentioned, he ought to come under the same arrangement.

General Meigs said that[[italics]] Congress[[italics]] made the distinction referred to by Dr. Welling, and it was not for the Board to advise or dictate to Congress. 

[This view was assented to by various members of the Board.]

The Secretary having stated that the accounts of the Museum were settled by the Interior Department, and that the estimates for preservation, etc., of the collections were sent by him through the Secretary of the Interior to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chancellor remarked that he thought that all the accounts of the Institution in regard to any operations committed to it, should be settled directly with the Treasury Department, and no through an intermediate department. 

The Secretary said that the Chancellor has anticipated what he was about to say. As the Executive Committee had observed, the relations of the Museum with the Department of the Interior on the one hand and with the Regents on the other, are undoubtedly ambiguous, since the late Secretary of the Interior himself wrote to say that he did not understand them. At present the Secretary of the Institution transmits the estimates for the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Treasury, but does not transmit those of the Museum, which are sent through the Secretary of the Interior. It would seem desirable that some arrangement should be made by which in the future all estimates should be submitted to the Secretary of the Treasure, and all appropriations for the Museum, as well as for the Bureau of Ethnology, made