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field making large and systematic collections in North, Middle and South America. The Curator has often called attention to this fact and now repeats it with emphasis, that the old-fashioned desultory harvesting should come to an end, that a correct understanding of what constitutes valuable ethnological material should be thoroughly made out, that our collections as they now exist should be compared with this plan and the gaps and missing links discovered and pointed out; after that, no pains should be spared to procure material. No one disputes that publication in ethnological lines is more active in Washington than in all other museums in our country put together, but we are falling behind rapidly in the matter of acquiring new material and in the matter of filling out and supplementing those already in hand.
Now, in a publication made by this Curator in the Smithsonian Report for 1895, he has elaborated 18 culture areas in the Western World, divided the products of human activity into seven large classes, and has indicated in a table what constitutes the necessary data for a correct study of the ethnography of these culture regions. It would be very easy with the aid of a single clerk to prepare a comprehensive table with the material in the Museum for the purpose of indicating where we are rich and where we are poor, and to show what material should be secured and what regions should be explored in order that the National Museum may present a complete culture history of all the tribes that have lived upon the American Continent^[[,]] so far as their arts are now accessible to us.