No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 3S1 



itj, much of wliich has been in Pennsylvania and adjoining statew, 

 convinces me tliat the amount of money uselessly spent in prospect- 

 ing is much larger than is generally known, and it is with a view 

 to cheeking this, if even to a slight degree, that impels me to make 

 this departure from the usual form of report. The work and object 

 of the Department of Agriculture is for the benefit and protection 

 of the farmers of the Commonwealth. To benefit him, by giving him 

 information that will aid him in procuring better results from his 

 labor and to protect his crops and live stock from the ravages of 

 disease and his orchards from destruction through jjarasites, etc. 



Such being the case, should we not protect him from the incur- 

 sions of human parasites, whose attacks are made not upon his 

 fields and orchards but upon the farmer himself, or more specifically 

 upon his pocket book? It is to be regretted that we can not apply 

 to them some of Prof. Surface's sulfur washes, since these fakirs 

 at times do more material harm to the farmer himself than do the 

 San Jos^ Scale to his orchards. Within the brain of many a land 

 owner, whether farmer or not, there lurks a suspicion that beneath 

 his lands there may be a rich deposit of coal or other mineral or, 

 perhaps too, an oil pool or gas area. Certain portions of his pro- 

 perty may be mountainous, of no use for farming, in fact to all out- 

 ward appearances generally worthless, unj^ess perhaps it might con- 

 tain some mineral deposit or deposits. He can not understand, it 

 seems, why it is barren, for everything has its purpose, and with 

 the aid of some fakir, perhaps, he works himself into the belief that 

 there must be within it, some mineral deposit of value, needing 

 only the application of the-^pick or drill to expose it, and, perhaps, 

 make himself a millionaire. 



It is much easier to build air castles than castles of stone, and 

 there may be no harm in the construction of the former, provided 

 it is not done at the financial loss of the builder. All that is neces- 

 sary, apparently, to begin the work of building is for the laud owner 

 or the fakir to find a few shining yellow flakes of mica, a few nod- 

 ules of iron pyrites or some bits of black shale or slate which are 

 respectively believed to be indications of great deposits of gold, 

 silver and coal and that these await only development to make the 

 owner a modern Croesus, or at least a rich man. Samples of these 

 are sent to a chemist for assay or analysis. If to an honest one, an 

 honest report is rendered, but if sent to a fakir or unscrupulous oue, 

 the probabilities are that an alluring report is written and duly for- 

 warded. 



Now, the unscrupulous fellow, knowing that if he find the merest 

 trace of a valuable mineral in a specimen, he cannot be successfully 

 prosecuted for fraud, if he report that the specimen contains gold, 

 silver or carbon. He then reports that he has found these things 

 and suggests "digging" deeper, as the ore (?) will probably become 

 richer at a greater depth, and that a second assay or analysis should 

 be made. In most instances, the gold and silver, if found, is found 

 in the trouser's pocket of the victim and ultimately finds its way into 

 the pocket of the fake chemist. After digging av/ay for weeks and 

 months and spending money for hired labor, it dawns upon the pros- 

 pector that his labor is lost, his money is gone and his air castle 

 has been entirely destroyed. Then, perhaps, he consults a reput- 

 able professional man and learns from him, that from start to 

 finish, he never had the slightest chance to succeed. 



