402 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



basis as the Hatch Fund, requiring the amounts to be appropriated 

 annually in the agricultural bill. With due allowance for this item, 

 however, there is still an actual enlargement of the appropriations of 

 every bureau, and a net increase of fully 20 per cent for the Depart- 

 ment as a whole. 



In general the increased appropriations are for the purpose of 

 extending and developing lines of work already under way rather 

 than the undertaking of new projects, and some of the principal 

 increases are for what may be termed the administrative activ- 

 ities of the Department. One of the largest new items is an appro- 

 priation of $1,000,000 for fighting and preventing forest fires in the 

 National Forests in cases of extraordinary emergency. This appro- 

 priation is in addition to the regular appropriation of $150,000 for 

 fire fighting under ordinary conditions, and supplements deficiency 

 appropriations of over $900,000 incurred as a result of the disastrous 

 fires of last summer. 



The Federal meat inspection, which has been enforced by the De- 

 partment from a permanent annual appropriation of $3,000,000, 

 receives an indirect increase of $155,000 through the transfer of its 

 clerical force to the statutory roll of the Bureau of Animal Industry. 

 The Bureau of Chemistry receives $60,000 additional for the enforce- 

 ment of the Food and Drugs Act, and the Weather Bureau $75,490 

 additional for its weather service. Provision is also made by an 

 appropriation of $87,000 for the enforcement of the Insecticide Act, 

 which became effective January 1, 1911, and for which a deficiency 

 appropriation of $35,000 had been allowed for expenses to July 1. 



A number of propositions involving general legislation were con- 

 sidered in connection with the bill, but as finally enacted the law 

 remains substantially a routine measure. The Secretary was again 

 authorized to continue investigations on the cost of food supplies 

 at the farm and to the consmner; and a special appropriation of 

 $5,000 was added for a study of chestnut bark disease. 



Comparison of the allotments to the various bureaus in this act 

 and those preceding it is rendered difficult because their clerical em- 

 ployees will, in accordance with a clause inserted in the act of 1911, 

 be transferred on July 1 from the various lump-fund appropriations 

 on which a portion of them had been carried to the roll of positions 

 specifically provided for. These transfers in certain cases — as, for 

 example, in this office and the Bureau of Statistics — involve but a 

 few employees, but in the case of the Forest Service, where 1,894 

 forest rangers and similar employees are to be transferred, they 

 occasion an apparent increase in the appropriations for statutory 

 salaries from $60,200 for the current year to $2,318,680, with a cor- 

 responding deduction from lump-fund appropriations. The lump- 

 fund appropriations, therefore, for a particular purpose, such as 



