THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 1859-61. 669 



Mr. Grimes. What is the appropriation of $6,000 for ? 

 Mr. Fessenden. For putting them in order and arrang- 

 ing them. 



Mr. Cameron. I move to strike out the appropriation. 

 I have no doubt if these things are of any use, scientific 

 people will be glad to get them, and lam willing to let them 

 have them, if thej will take them. 



Mr. Rice. The question strikes me in two different as- 

 pects, a personal and an official one. If we have a right to 

 make an appropriation for distributing stufted snakes, and 

 the various other things that may be collected and brought 

 here, why have we not a right to make an appropriation for 

 distributing the models in the Patent Office; or distributing 

 hoes, plows, and other implements ? This has all grown 

 out of an infraction, in my opinion, of the Constitution, by 

 distributing seeds. We must stop somewhere. If you can 

 do this under the Constitution, what can you not do? I 

 know that the Smithsonian Institution has done great good 

 for the country. I am applied to daily, for books published 

 by it, and I know that they are valuable ; but it is not, un- 

 der the Constitution, a Government institution. Let us 

 stop somewhere, and I think we might as well stop here as 

 anywhere. 



Mr. Hale. I think so too. I should like the country to 

 know how much wehavespentfor printing pictures of bugs, 

 reptiles, &c., that these exploring expeditions have brought 

 here. We published eleven or twelve volumes of the ex- 

 ploring expedition, illustrated with pictures of bugs, snakes, 

 and reptiles. It has cost us millions of dollars to print those 

 pictures, and now we are going to spend $10,000 to distrib- 

 ute them after spending millions to print pictures of them. 

 The thing is all wrong, sir. 



Mr. Mason. Mr. President, I have been for many years 

 one of the regents of this institution, under the appoint- 

 ment of the Senate, in connection with my friend from 

 Maryland. We know that it is a public trust; one, we 

 think, of a sacred character. We know as a fact, and it 

 appears in the records of that institution, that these speci- 

 mens of natural history, sent from the Patent Office to the 

 Smithsonian Institution, were sent there against the remon- 

 strances, repeated from year to year, of that institution ; 

 and if either the Senator from Pennsylvania, or the Senator 

 from New Hampshire, or any gentleman who thinks with 

 them, would introduce an amendment to this bill directing 



