two thousand (842,000) acres to seven hundred and twenty thousand (720,000) acres. The potato product of the Channel Islands, France, and Belgium amounts to about three million (3,000,000) cwt. every year. But during the year 1894, up to and inclusive of the month of May, a considerable shipment of potatoes was made from England to the United States. When those shipments were made, potatoes were selling in New York for $2.25 per sack of 168 pounds, and the price in England was $7.29 to $12.15 per ton of 2,240 pounds. In October, 1894, potatoes were selling in New York at $1.85 per sack of 168 pounds, while the prices ranged in England at from $14.60 to $17 per ton.

The cost of transportation for potatoes from Great Britain to the United States per ton is about as follows: Drayage to the ship, 60 cents; freight, $3.03; sacks, $1.80. To these figures must be added insurance, duties, and commissions on this side. The duty is put on to protect the "infant industry" of potato-growing in the United States. It is supposed to make higher prices for those Americans who raise potatoes, and lower ones for those who eat them. A protective tariff is always depicted by its advocates as a dual blessing to the farmer, so adjusted as to always enhance the things he sells and cheapen the things he buys. However, English potato dealers do not look to the New York market for sales until prices there reach about $2.25 per sack. The potato crop of England this year is so limited that we shall not be able to draw supplies from there, even at higher prices than were obtained last year.

THE ASSISTANT SECRETARYSHIP.

On January 1, 1894, the Hon. Edwin Willits retired from the office of Assistant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. He remained, by request, up to that date, so that he might complete satisfactorily his arduous duties in connection with the Government's exhibit at the World's Fair. The sense of obligation which the Secretary is pleased to cherish for Mr. Willits, because of his many good services to the Department, is hereby very frankly acknowledged, and a sincere admiration for his rugged honesty, industry, and vigilance, as an official and efficient friend of agriculture during his entire connection with this administration, is unconcealed.

On the same date, Dr. Charles W. Dabney, jr., president of the University of Tennessee-who had previously been selected by the President and confirmed by the Senate as Assistant Secretary of Agriculture-entered upon the discharge of his duties. During many years this gentleman had been prominently and intimately identified with agricultural education. He had especially prepared himself in that line of study, by severe application in the laboratories of this country and in Germany. His experience as a State chemist, as director of an agricultural experiment station in North Carolina, and as president of the Universtiy of Tennessee, brought him to his present

position peculiarly well equipped for the discharge of its responsible duties. Therefore, on the 2d day of January, 1894, the Secretary of Agriculture issued a special order wholly revising the duties of the Assistant Secretary. That order assigned to him the entire direction. of all the scientific divisions, and likewise of the Office of Experiment Stations, of the Office of Irrigation Inquiry, of the Office of Fiber Investigation, and of the Museum. Himself a scientist, Dr. Dabney has discharged the duty of supervising the expenditures and controlling the direction of scientific research, operations, and policy with admirable judgment and skill.

The application of science to agriculture, under his management, is becoming, through practical bulletins published by the Department and other popular means, more generally appreciated, understood, and approved.

During the year the Department has entered upon two new lines of very important investigation. The first of these relates to grasses and forage plants.

AGROSTOLOGY.

The forage interests of the United States are vast in value. Seventy million (70,000,000) tons of hay are cut and cured each summer. This crop is taken from fifty million (50,000,000) acres of land. Each year's hay crop is estimated to be worth six hundred millions of dollars ($600,000,000). No accurate means have been found for ascertaining the cash value of grasses upon pasture and other lands that are grazed. It is known, however, that those lands support and fatten vast herds of cattle, sheep, and horses. In 1890 such ranges in the United States fed fourteen million fifty-nine thousand and thirty (14,059,030) head of domestic animals. As these millions of animals subsist largely upon native grasses and other forage plants, the magnitude of these figures elucidates the vital necessity of securing, if possible, new and better grasses and forage plants in this country. Therefore the Department of Agriculture has undertaken the development of a Division of Agrostology. The gentleman in charge of this new line of investigation, Prof. F. Lamson Scribner, has a national reputation. His appointment was made upon the recommendation of many of the best botanists in the several universities and colleges of the United States.

At present agrostology is merely an agency in the Division of Botany. It is the duty of the expert in charge of this agency to study grasses and forage plants in general and to instruct and familiarize the people of this country, through bulletins and leaflets, with regard to the conservation of the native grasses of the continent, and to teach them how to introduce from foreign countries such improved and useful forage plants as may be found adaptable and profitable in the United States. It will be his especial and specific duty to prepare and publish a work on "the forage plants of the United States," and subsequently a more

elaborate publication, "Handbook of grasses of the United States." This will contain descriptions and illustrations of all the known grasses of this country.

Through the Department of State the Secretary of Agriculture has secured the assistance of all the consular agents of the United States in collecting at their several stations or posts of duty any seeds of forage plants. These specimens and seeds are forwarded directly to this Department and submitted to Prof. Scribner for examination and testing. Thus it is proposed to search the whole civilized globe for grasses and forage plants which may be of value to the people in each section of the United States. It is hoped that in this way the quantity per acre of the hay crop of this country may be very materially increased and its quality improved. If, however, the hay production per acre in the United States is, as a result of this effort in behalf of agrostology, raised only 1 per cent, it is equal to an increase of six millions of dollars per year in the value of this single farm product. Prof. Scribner's investigations have already reached such proportions, and they promise to become of such inestimable value to the farmers of the United States, that it is proposed to create a new division in this Department, as provided in the estimates herewith submitted, to be called "The Division of Agrostology."

AGRICULTURAL SOILS AND CROP PRODUCTION.

The second new line of investigation relates to agricultural soils and crop production. Such soils have long presented a problem unsolved by chemical analysis. It has been known for some time that the peculiarly valuable characteristics of different agricultural soils are often due to some other cause or causes than the chemical composition. Climatic conditions are potent in their influences as to the general distribution of plants, but they alone do not explain why one soil is well adapted to one variety of crop while the soil in an adjacent field, receiving the same amount of rainfall and heat, is wholly unadapted to it while perfectly adapted to an entirely different crop requiring an altogether different nutrition.

Records of climatic conditions generally end at the surface of the earth. But the farmer's interests are equally connected and concerned with the climatic conditions within the soil and below the surface of the ground.

The amount of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter contained in soils so modifies the atmospheric conditions that different soils maintain very different degrees of moisture and temperature for plant life. Different varieties of plants require different degrees of moisture and heat for their best development. Thus each class finds the conditions best adapted to its peculiar nature in different kinds of soil. Wheat requires a low temperature. Corn requires a relatively high tempera

ture. Celery and rice develop best in moist soils. Sweet potatoes and peanuts require a comparatively dry, sandy soil.

Deeply tilled soils provide a large reservoir for the rainfall. The deeper the soil is stirred and cultivated, the larger the reservoir. The texture of the soil-that is, the relative amount of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter which it contains, and the way in which these constit uent grains are arranged-determines the amount of water which the soil may retain from rains. Sandy soils retain comparatively little water, because they afford little resistance to percolation of the rainfall. Through them the water leeches down beyond the reach of vegetation, and is lost to plants. Such soils are naturally adapted to the forcing of early "truck" and vegetables, and to such plants as are grown for fine texture and bright-colored leaf development.

Soils having a great amount of clay in their composition offer great resistance to the rainfall. The movement of moisture downward through such soils is exceedingly slow, and thus an abundant humidity is generally retained; this adapts them to the growth of wheat and pasture grasses that need an abundant supply of water for their growth. On such soils tobacco also grows strongly, throwing out heavy leaves which contain a great amount of oil and gum, developing a character of tobacco adapted to an entirely different purpose from that grown from the same seed in lighter soils.

Considerations like these led this year to the establishment of a division in the Weather Bureau for the study of meteorology in its relation to soils. Prof. Milton Whitney, who had previously been in the service of the Department as a special agent engaged upon these investigations and had made a marked reputation by his careful and original work, was appointed chief of this division.

Observations have been made during the past season on the conditions of moisture and heat in the typical soils of the "truck” area of the Atlantic seaboard and in several of the soil areas adapted to the different types of tobacco, and likewise in the soils of the arid regions of the West.

These observations have shown the cause of the peculiar value of "truck" lands. They have indicated also large breadths of land similar to them which are at present practically abandoned, although well adapted to the important and oftentimes very lucrative industry of raising early vegetables for the markets of our great cities. Investigations have shown the reason for the differences in the type of tobacco grown in several of the most important tobacco regions. They have explained why certain types of land in the several regions are not adapted to the varieties of tobacco demanded by the present domestic and foreign markets. They have demonstrated this, and also suggested how the conditions of these lands may be changed to render them productive of a demanded grade of tobacco.

From the careful examination thus far made of the soils of the

so-called arid regions of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, Prof. Whitney is convinced that, with their present climate, and with improved methods of thorough preparation and deep cultivation, and with a careful selection and modification and rotation of crops, they may be vastly improved in the certainty and constancy of their agricultural productiveness. Prof. Whitney does not claim, however, that deep subsoiling alone can wholly obviate the necessity of irrigation, but he impresses the fact that irrigation is always expensive, and that there are vast areas of arid lands which can never be irrigated nor profitably farmed under existing methods.

The time is not remote when in all the arid and subarid regions of the Northwest deep subsoil tillage will be regarded as the only probable certain assurance against the loss of crops in long-continued drought. The farmers in these regions must soon come to understand that the deeper, in plowing, the soil and subsoil is stirred, with subsequent deep tillage of corn or root crops during the summer, the greater the capacity for the storage of the rainfall and the less the liability of crop failure. Especially will this be demonstrated in the soils and subsoils of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, where there is so much of silt and so little of sand in the lands.

When the conditions essential to the proper development of particular kinds of crops are perfectly understood and established, these investigations will supply the basis for a more intelligent use of water. It is now the intention of the U. S. Department of Agriculture to have the texture and physical conditions of the principal agricultural soils of the American Union thoroughly examined. Thus it will establish among the people the knowledge of the necessary conditions for the maintenance of crops. When the conditions in these typical soils are understood, they will be the basis for comparison with other soils. Such comparison will show what class of crops each soil is fitted for and how soil conditions may be changed to adapt it to any particular crop for which the general climatic conditions seem favorable.

As a basis for this work, a vast amount of material, consisting of nearly two thousand samples of soils, which have been collected with skill and judgment from all parts of the United States, is in possession of the Department.

In consideration of the vast importance of this work, the Secretary of Agriculture recommends that this division be taken out of the Weather Bureau and established as an independent division in this Department. Estimates have been submitted in accordance with this plan.

WEATHER BUREAU.

The administration of the Weather Bureau during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1894, cost fourteen (14) per cent less than the appropriation made for that period of time. The financial history of the