The above statement shows that $60,622.21 was spent in preparing seeds for distribution-a sum in the aggregate lacking less than $3,000 of the cost of the seed delivered.

The cost per package of seed distributed is 1.29 cents, against 2 cents for the preceding year.

During the fiscal year 1892-'93 the number of seed packages distributed was seven million seven hundred and four thousand four hundred and sixty-four (7,704,464); and during the year 1893-'94, the number of packages distributed is nine million five hundred and fifty-five thousand three hundred and eighteen (9,555,318). The total expenditure for the fiscal year 1892-'93, including the statutory salaries and compensation of others detailed to this work, was one hundred and sixty thousand dollars ($160,000), and for the year 1893-'94 one hundred and twentyseven thousand seven hundred and eight dollars ($127,708).

The extravagance and inutility of these disbursements are apparent to any person who will investigate the results of the expenditure. That the distribution is regarded with very little interest, is evidenced by the fact that, taking nine millions of papers of seed, there is an average of five papers to each person, for it is safe to say that there were 1,800,000 citizens of the United States who received seeds out of this promiscuous distribution. Out of this number nine hundred and forty (940) persons acknowledged their receipt, and in those cases it was generally with a request for more seed. The State of Iowa sent 35 acknowledgments, Kansas 30, Connecticut 16, New Jersey 2, Nebraska 33, New York 62, New Hampshire 5, Rhode Island 1. The other States indicate about the same degree of indifference, so that there are less than one thousand acknowledgments by more than one and threequarter million recipients.

In view of the above, it is difficult to see how any practical statesman can advocate an annual disbursement of $160,000 for such a purpose. Educationally, that sum of money might be made of infinite advantage to the farmers of the United States if it were expended in the publication and distribution of bulletins showing, in terse and plain language, how chemistry, botany, entomology, forestry, vegetable pathology, veterinary, and other sciences may be applied to agriculture. If, in a sort of paternal way, it is the duty of this Government to distribute anything gratuitously, are not new ideas of more permanent value than old seeds? Is it a function of government to make gratuitous distribution of any material thing?

No estimate has been made for an appropriation for the purchase of seeds for the next fiscal year. If it is deemed best to make such an appropriation, it is recommended that $500 be allotted to each one of the experiment stations of the several States and Territories, which for forty-eight (48) stations would amount to $24,000. Such a law should provide that each station purchase such new and improved varieties of seeds, cuttings, and bulbs as, after examination, may seem

to its director probably adaptable to the soil and climate of the State in which his station is located. If there ever was any sound statesmanship in this gratuitous distribution of seed, which has already cost the Government of the United States several millions of dollars, the reason and necessity for such distribution was removed when the experiment stations were established in the several States and Territories. Those stations are in charge of scientific men. They are, therefore, particularly well equipped for the trial, testing, and approval or condemnation of such new varieties as may be introduced from time to time.

LIBRARY.

Since the present librarian, Mr. W. P. Cutter, who was certified by the United States Civil Service Commission, took charge of the library of the Department of Agriculture modern methods have been introduced, for the first time, into its conduct. A dictionary catalogue has been instituted, and the books have been arranged in a regular system, in accordance with which the valuable material in it will be made available for students. The increased appropriation has been used to fill out the fragmentary sets of scientific periodicals and to purchase works bearing upon the sciences studied by the Department experts. A reading room has been arranged and increased facilities provided for the convenience of investigators. The library has been made in this manner a working laboratory instead of a miscellaneous storehouse.

OFFICE OF FIBER INVESTIGATION.

A report on the uncultivated bast fibers, such as are found upon the inner bark of plants, was completed during the year by the Office of Fiber Investigations, and also a paper on the method of tillage and manufacture of ramie, which contains careful estimates of the cost of instituting ramie plantations, with reliable figures as to the probable or possible yield. The inquiry as to the production of flax in the region of Puget Sound, Washington, has been continued. Flax grown in that region during the past season has been retted and prepared. Though the local agents engaged in this work did not because of lack of experience-perfectly perform their duties, nevertheless, practical flax planters, who examined their product, have declared that Washington flax would produce, with skillful treatment, a very fine quality of fiber.

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DIVISION OF MICROSCOPY.

Studies have been continued in this division upon the edible and poisonous mushrooms. These investigations have aimed to discriminate between edible and nonedible varieties and to give the people of the country plain and safe directions by which they might know them. It is hoped that in this way our neglected resources among these fungi may become better known and more used. For the purpose of giving

assistance to amateurs in mushroom culture experiments have been made to ascertain the better method of cultivating mushroom spawn. Investigations on butter and butter fats have also been continued. Requests are constantly received from official chemists, chemists of State boards of health, etc., for information or assistance with regard to the identification of oleomargarine, butterine, and the various lard substitutes, and for discriminating between the different lubricating oils, etc.

Nearly two thousand careful measurements of the length of fibers of the cotton staple, domestic and foreign, and the average, together with the maximum and minimum lengths, has been recorded.

OFFICE OF IRRIGATION INQUIRY.

The chief of the Office of Irrigation Inquiry passed the earlier months of the year in Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah collecting information as to the modes of irrigation most successfully used in those States and Territories. In that tour relations were established between this office and the people directly interested in this system of cultivation, from which it is hoped good may come in the way of additional practical information. It is believed that all those engaged in farming in the arid and subarid regions where irrigation is practiced may soon be brought into immediate correspondence with the Department.

The office has given some attention to the study of percolation and evaporation in the Rocky Mountain regions, where the annual snowfall is the source of many of the streams which fertilize the plains below.

BUILDINGS.

Neither the character nor the condition of the buildings of the Department can be truthfully commended. There are many wooden structures in the rear of the main edifice which are a constant menace, because of the combustible materials of which they are constructed. The laboratories in and about these buildings are constantly using alcohol, gas, oils, ether, and other inflammable and explosive substances. It is therefore imperatively necessary that such laboratories, together with all divisions which by their experiments may possibly create conflagrations, should be removed from these Government buildings.

In view of the tinder-box character of the subsidiary buildings of the Department, it is recommended that all the laboratories and shops be removed to rented brick buildings across the street, in the rear of the Department grounds, provided said buildings can be secured by a reasonable annual outlay of the public money.

The act creating this Department declares as follows:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there is hereby established at the seat of Government a United States Department of Agriculture, the general designs and duties of which

shall be to acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.

But there was no building provided for the Department of Agriculture under that act, and rooms were assigned to the Commissioner and his employés in the basement of the Patent Office, where they remained six years. In 1867 one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) was appropriated for the present main building of the Department, and it was occupied in 1868. From that time, with a few minor changes in the interior, this building has remained practically unchanged. It is 170 feet long by 61 feet in breadth. It has a basement, three full stories, and an attic. This building contains, exclusive of halls, 6,860 square feet of available floor space in the basement; 5,800 square feet on the first floor; on the second floor, including the galleries in the library, there are 10,344 square feet; on the third floor, 2,384 square feet; and there are 4,558 square feet in actual use in the attic, aggregating in occupancy at present, 29,946 square feet of floor space. The basement, two-thirds of which is below the surface of the ground, contains the boiler and fuel rooms, the storerooms of the Property Division, the laboratory of the Division of Ornithology and Mammalogy, the postoffice, and the printing office; and in this ill-lighted and badly ventilated place from 25 to 30 people, including the engineers and firemen, are almost always at work.

The library requires the larger portion of the second and third floors of the building. Little space, relatively, is used for the offices of the Secretary, Assistant Secretary, and chiefs of division. The attic of the main building contains the offices and laboratories of two of the most important divisions. Excessive heat and defective ventilation are unavoidable in these apartments.

The building, just described, was erected to accommodate the Bureau of that date, composed of four divisions and employing fifty (50) persons. Those divisions, with the laboratory and Museum, fully occupied the building at the time of its completion. Pressure for space becoming greater from year to year, and adequate appropriations for the erection of substantial buildings having failed, the Department has been forced to erect cheap wooden structures upon the grounds. In such buildings is sheltered much valuable property. The Museum building cost about ten thousand dollars ($10,000). A better building to burn could not be invented or constructed, and yet it contains a Museum which, on the market, is worth at least one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000). Annually the Government is paying more than seven hundred thousand dollars ($700,000) for agricultural experiment stations in' the several States and Territories. The cost of a central office in tis Department for collating, compiling, and publishing the reports of these stations is each year twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000). The chief records of the Office of Experiment Stations are compiled and stored in

this combustible wooden Museum building. In it are stored the records of the results of agricultural experiments for which the U. S. Government has already paid out nearly five millions of dollars ($5,000,000). The same building contains the publications of the Department and the offices of several important divisions, together with all the valuable data which each has acquired.

In wooden buildings of equally combustible character are housed the testing laboratory of the Division of Forestry; the carpenter shop; stores of seeds; soil samples, collected at no inconsiderable expense from all parts of the Republic; and all tools and implements used by the superintendent of gardens and grounds and the various scientific bureaus.

As the work of the scientific divisions multiplied it became necessary some years ago to rent two private buildings on B street SW. One of them is occupied by the laboratory of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and the other is the domicile of the Chemical Laboratory of the Department. For the first-mentioned building is paid $1,200 per annum rent, notwithstanding the Government preliminarily expended about $6,000 in adapting the various rooms for present purposes and fitting them with gas, laboratory desks, steam, and water. The Chemical Laboratory building costs $75 per month rent, although the Government had expended $4,500 thereupon in making similar improvements. There is hardly a university or agricultural college in the United States which has not better constructed, better lighted, and better ventilated laboratories than those used by the Department of Agriculture.

Since its removal from the Patent Office, twenty-six years ago, and its establishment as a Department, only one hundred and fifty-four thousand dollars ($154,000), have been appropriated for buildings for its use, exclusive of the Signal Office building purchased while that office was in the War Department. During the same number of years other Departments of the Government have expended for the erection of buildings in the city of Washington, up to June 30, 1894, inclusive, $19,126,826.09.

In view of the fact that the Department of Agriculture is maintained to educationally supervise that industry which furnishes the solid, fecund source of the revenues whence all that vast sum of money was derived, it may not be inappropriate to suggest more commodious accommodations for its further development and usefulness. The Weather Bureau, at the corner of Twenty-fourth and M streets, is too remote from the Department to receive that personal daily supervision of the Secretary which its magnitude and importance require. It is evident that this valuable property which the Government now owns, and upon which the Weather Bureau building stands, could, if authorized by law, be sold very advantageously. It is believed that it would probably bring a sum of money sufficient to erect substantial buildings for the Department of Agriculture, wherein the Weather