264 : a 
tral provinces of thecountry. In addition to the employment of farmers | 
and cultivators in collecting and. destroying the larve of the insects, 
the government has resolved to employ bodies of soldiers in destroying 
the insects, and to appropriate money in aid of the afflicted localities, 
Another subject which at this time engages the attention of the goy- 
ernment is the planting of forest-trees, which are wanting in extensive 
regions of the country. A law has been proposed in the Cortes of Spain 
for the compulsory planting of forests on a large scale in such regions. 
The Department of Agriculture is indebted to the Secretary of State 
for two communications from Hon.C. Cushing, the American minister at 
Madrid; the one embracing the royal orders on the subject of checking 
the multiplication of locusts, and the other the project of the law for 
enforcing the planting of forest-trees. These documents are subjoined. 
Sir: I observe that Congress is taking measures to check the reproduction of locusts 
which have been so prejudicial to agriculture in some of our trans-Mississippi States 
and Territories. These insects are, and long have béen, one of the plagues of several 
of the central provinces of Spain. It may be of interest to you to have information 
of some means employed in that country to protect the same from their ravages. In 
addition to the measure heretofore in use, of employing the farmers and cultivators at 
this season of the year in collecting and destroying the larve of the locusts for stated 
compensation at the charge of the various municipalities, it is now proposed to appro- 
priate public money in aid of the afflicted localities, and employ bodies of soldiers to 
assist the inhabitants. 
I annex copy and translation of two royal orders on the subject, just issued by the 
minister of Fomento, in the first of which representation is made of the purpose of 
the government to give preferent attention now, on the return of peace, to the cultiva- 
tion of material interests and to the development of industrial resources, especially 
agriculture, which have suffered so much from the revolutions and civil wars which 
recent political extravagances of opinion and violences of act have brought on Spain. 
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your;obedient servant, 
C. CUSHING. 
ROYAL ORDERS. 
[Translation.] 
Most ILLustrious Sir: Not in vain had the government, seconding the noble and 
elevated purposes of our august monarch, promised that, so soon as peace became a 
fact, it would at once dedicate its first cares and its most preferent attention to the 
real elements of our national wealth, so much decayed and downfallen in these recent 
years of direful perturbation. 
Our country, an eminently agricultural one, has the right to demand from the public 
powers the first fruits of that happy event which all Spain is now celebrating with 
unbounded joy; and certainly it is not for the government to haggle about bestowing 
them, disposed as it is to protect and encourage, by all the means within its proper 
sphere of action and development, the material interests of the nation, its evil-treated 
agriculture, its impoverished industry, and its downcast commerce. . 
The necessities of the war, as pressing as they were terrible, have snatched away from 
our fields the most vigorous of the arms that labored there, ieaving their working and 
cultivation in lamentable abandonment, which very speedily made itself sorrowfully 
felt by greatly increasing the price of labor, rendering traffic difficult, and lessening 
production in a high degree. To these evils, which increased in gravity day by day, 
the government has endeavored, with all solicitude, to supply an immediate and effi- 
cient remedy, by restoring to their sad firesides, to the bosom of their afilicted families, 
to the parched tields which cried aloud for them, a large number of the proud youth of 
Spain, who, in the ranks of our heroic army, were yesterday courageously fighting on 
the fields of battle and shedding their generous blood for the legitimate constitutional 
monarchy and the liberties of their country. Seventy thousand men already dis- 
charged by the government are now spread over Spain, bearing upon their sun-bronzed 
brows the laurel of victory and in their hands the beauteous symbol of peace, sweet 
messenger of the great benefits which the country may and ought to yet hope for, if 
her sons do not forget the recent lessons of their misfortune, and are able to find their 
inspiration in the public necessities, with resolute purpose to satisfy them, by en- 
couraging and developing all legitimate interests. 
And the government has not contented itself with the mere return to their respective 
provinces of these thousands of men who, after having watered with their blood the 
