EDITORIAL. 507 



port. During that period these institutions have secured the attention 

 of great numbers of intelligent farmers in every State and Territory. 

 As agricultural prosperity has increased the farmers themselves have 

 taken increased interest in securing larger grants of public funds for 

 agricultural education and research and have- cordially supported the 

 managers of colleges, schools, and experiment stations in building 

 up these institutions. 



The directions in which agricultural progress has been made have 

 also borne clear evidence of the practical benefits derived from science 

 applied to agriculture. It is therefore impossible to make any ac- 

 curate account of our agricultural progress in recent years without 

 giving a large place to the results of experimental inquiries and to 

 the relations of science and education in aiding advances in this 

 industry. So far from exhausting the store of material which might 

 have been drawn upon, the Secretary has been compelled by limits of 

 space to confine his resume to the larger and more striking features 

 of scientific, as w^ell as practical, interest and to treat these in the 

 broadest outline. 



An important feature of the development of the Department, as 

 related to its material equipment, to which the Secretary's report 

 calls attention, is the completion of the new Department building. 

 This building, for which Congress appropriated $1,500,000 in 1902, 

 Avas begun in 1901 and completed in March, 1908. Upon completion 

 of the building steps were " immediately taken toward its occupancy 

 by the various Bureaus of the Department, which were very inade- 

 quately housed in scattered buildings rented by the Department." 

 The building consists of two L-shaped wings designed especially for 

 laboratory use which it is planned to connect by a central part to be 

 used for administration purposes. 



The wings each have a frontage of 256 feet with an L extending to 

 the rear 100 feet. They are four stories in height above a high base- 

 ment, and all the floors are made readily accessible by three elevators 

 in each wing. There are twenty-five working rooms on each floor, 

 and the total floor space provided by each building is eighty thousand 

 square feet including the corridors. This leaves about fifty-five 

 thousand square feet in each wing available for office and laboratory 

 rooms. The corridors are wide and well lighted. 



The construction is of the most substantial kind and is fireproof 

 throughout. The exterior walls are of marble and of solid masonry, 

 and those on the court side of light brick with marble trimmings. 



Each room is so arranged that it can be readily converted into a 



laboratory, although at present many of the rooms are occupied as 



offices. Provision is made for supplying each laboratory room with 



hot and cold water, distilled water, gas, live steam, compressed air 



70454— No. 6—09 3 



