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23.

12. Please present any plans which you have in view for the development of your department.

I have several suggestions looking to an improvement in my department, some of which are details and others much broader:

[[margin note]] Same as last year except ref. to Brussels Ex. (pp. 24 & 25-) & paragraph 5.- [[/margin note]]

I. Within the last ten years the collection in this department has increased from 65000 to 225260. This material is all useful, not to say necessary, in accomplishing the raison d'etre of the existence of the department, that is to say, the perfection of our knowledge of the origin, growth and culture of prehistoric man. But to use it for this purpose requires, not a change but an enlargement of the plan which has been heretofore pursued. It is proposed by this enlargement to classify the implements and objects as rigidly and in as much detail as is possible. This classification or division should deal with the object, its form, material and function, and extend to localities, narrowing them as much as possible. This scheme applied, for example, to the State of Pennsylvania, would divide the State into the localities of the valleys of the Delaware and Susquehanna on the east and, on the west, the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, following them and their branches to their head-waters, if need be, independent of State lines. In this way we would be able to compare the implements of these three valleys in three different sections of the State and see what differences were manifested. In this way we might hope to determine the differences in the industry or culture of these localities. The classification of material implements were made to their respective quarries and localities. A comparison between the implements of the various localities thus divided would show the commerce, if it did not show the migration, between the various peoples who occupied these localities.

This scheme should be carried out with all the implements and extended to all localities, and they should be described correctly, fully, and in detail, each different kind having two illustrations, one the large and the other the small size, and one or the other of them should have an edge as well as a side view. When this is done we will have a fairly accurate knowledge of the number and kind, with the various differences of form and material, of every implement in the Museum, from every locality. This can only be done by personal inspection of each object, wherein the cases must be opened and the objects handled and counted