294 The Plant World. 



and grass seeds accompanied by expert demonstrations of the 

 value of these crops in the Congressman's district. The idea was 

 that the Department should expend the amount of money re- 

 quired for each quota of vegetable and flower seeds in demon- 

 strating the value of a new farm crop to the constituents of a 

 member of Congress and in distributing seeds of this crop to 

 them. It was not possible to carry out this plan, however, be- 

 cause while the members were willing that this demonstration 

 work should be done they wanted their regular quotas of seed 

 too. The valuable results from the introduction of new crops 

 must be looked for in the office of Seed and Plant Distribution. 

 This office works in harmony with the various crop experts of the 

 Department and makes a systematic effort to fill each need as it 

 arises. 



At present the Congressional Free Seed Distribution requires 

 50,030,000 packets of vegetable and 10,590,000 packets of flower 

 seeds to flll the quotas. There are 20,000 packages of vegetable 

 and 2,000 packages of flower seeds to each senator and member of 

 Congress and 1,000,000 packages of vegetable and 150,000 

 packages of flower seeds for the Secretary of Agriculture. Each 

 of these packages contain five packets. The quantity of seed 

 needed to fill these varies with the sorts purchased each year, 

 but is in the neighborhood of 1,250,000 pounds of vegetable and 

 and 43,000 pounds of flower seed. Beside the vegetable and 

 flower seeds there are put up some other seeds in smaller quan- 

 tities and a certain number of bulbs. The appropriation is 

 large and the work has to be rushed through in a comparatively 

 short time, so that it is particularly necessary that the organiza- 

 tion of the work should be good. This is the case, and the men 

 engaged in the administration of this office deserve more credit 

 than they often get for honesty and efficiency. It is gratifying 

 to record that although there are perhaps few offices in the ser- 

 vice where there are more opportunities for corruption, there has 

 not been a suggestion of it in this office since the work was placed 

 in the Bureau of Plant Industry. 



In order to send, as far as possible, the varieties that are best 

 for each section, the United States is divided into districts.- 

 For each district several combinations are made up, each com- 

 bination consisting of five varieties. These combiHations are' 

 made up in the fall of the year previous to that in ivhich the 



