12 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



Beverely felt, and its fulfilment would be hailed with genuine delight by all 

 who are fully alive to the growing importance of fniit culture. 



The purposes of the garden, as a proper auxiliary to the department, will not 

 be fully answered until a botanical collection and museum is established. It is 

 a source of well-founded surprise by visitors to the capital of the nation that no 

 systematic attempt has been advanced having in view the foundation of a 

 museum of native vegetable products, or a general botanical garden of plants. 



It is daily becoming more and more apparent that, in order to fully carry out 

 the objects of this department, increased facilities must be secured for the ex- 

 tended cultivation of agriculture for the purposes of comparative experiment. 

 In no other way can we arrive at the intrinsic value of new introductions, 

 except by comparing them with those whose merits are already well estab- 

 lished. Again, with reference to the varied operations and practical details of 

 farming, the various implements employed in the cultivation and amelioration 

 of the soil, the advantages or disadvantages of thick or thin seeding, under 

 what condition and with what crops they may be followed, the effects of 

 draining, and the best and most economical modes of providing it, are only a 

 few of the more immediately obvious subjects affording matter for study and 

 investigation. To accomplish more fully what I deem to be necessary for the 

 full development of this branch of the department, it will be necessary to in- 

 crease the glass conservatories and propagating houses, for which I have a.«ked 

 an additional appropriation. 



I long ago perceived that the few acres of the propagating garden were quite 

 too limited for the need of this department in its present organization, and that 

 much more land would be required to cany out my ideas of what experimental 

 ground should show. To do this effectually, and essentially for the benefit of 

 the farmers of the country, there should be placed at the control of the depart- 

 ment land enough to test the various grains, grasses, and seeds of every kind 

 that may be offered, to try their genuineness, their soundness, their valu'.', and 

 the adaptability of any foreign ones to our own use. 



I have especially felt the want of this the past year, when suggestions have 

 been made as to the practicability of growing various trees, shrubs, medicinal, 

 and especially textile plants, either from foreign parts or spontaneous produc- 

 tions of our own forests or swamps, and it has seemed quite impossible to fulfil 

 that paramount duty, so emphatically set forth in the establishing act, "to test, 

 by cultivation, the value of such seeds and plants as may require such tests, to 

 propagate such as may be worthy of propagation, and to distribute them among 

 agriculturists." 



The Commissioner of Public Buildings, appreciating the difficulties under 

 which I labored, very kindly gave me authority to use that portion of "reser- 

 vation No. 2, between Twelfth and Fourteenth streets west," of government 

 grounds, and I at once made preparations to bring it into suitable cultivation, 

 when I was notified that the use of it was essentially necessary to the War 

 Department as a cattle yard. 



