BI-MOXTHLY EEPOET. 



DEPARTME^"T OF AGRICULTURE, 



Washington, April, 1864. 



As Commissioner of the Agricultural Department, I desire, whilst sub- 

 mitting the Bi-iioxTHLY Report for March and April to the judgment of the 

 farmers of the country, to state the purpose and the necessity of these 

 Bi-monthly Reports. 



Although the annual volume issued by this Department has been published 

 to the number of 130,000, and 60,000 additional copies have been ordered, 

 yet a half million of them would be insufficient to meet the demand for them. 

 Whilst this demand attests the approbation it has received, yet objections 

 have long existed to the volumes that have preceded it from the Patent 

 Office, on the ground that many topics discussed in them should have been 

 earlier considered, and the facts embodied in them made public at an earlier 

 period. Among the most prominent of like topics was such a collection of 

 agricultural statistics as would serve to show the amount of each crop as 

 soon as it was matured or harvested, that the price for it should be placed 

 on the just law of supply; for if a commodity is scarce from the shortness 

 of the crop, he whose labor has not met with its usual reward in quantity, 

 from the vicissitudes of the season, should receive the compensation which 

 the increased price gives, and not he who stands between the producer and 

 consumer. Again, a question like that of the proposed tax on leaf tobacco, 

 suddenly presented for consideration and action; or, like that of the manu- 

 facture of sorghum sugar and molasses, which the Department had con- 

 sidered through its chemist, and those engaged in it should learn the results 

 in time for their operations; or, like that presented in this report, of the 

 direction the raising of stock is taking; or, like that of agricultural educa- 

 tion, which a recent donation by Congress has invested with unexpected 

 interest, by demanding immediate action upon it — all such subjects, to be 

 efiFectively acted upon, need to be discussed immediately, and without that 

 delay consequent upon the publication of an annual volume only. 



Again, this Department was scarcely established before many persons, 

 devoted to the advancement of agriculture in its various branches, com- 

 menced a correspondence with it. How should this correspondence be 

 replied to ? By discouraging it with that brief, formal red-tape style of 

 letter-writing which belongs to ordinary official communications, and which 

 would but inform every correspondent that the writer knew nothing of the 

 subjects sought to be discussed ? Leading agricultural writers demanded 



