120 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
est harvests. The Government cannot better convert the funds of the 
nation to the increase of its agricultural products—the primary sources 
of national wealth. This fact was clearly understood by President 
Grant, when, in his last message, he said: 
The subjects of education and agriculture are of great interest to the success of our 
republican institutions, and our happiness and grandeur as anation. In the interest 
of one a burean has been established in the Interior Department—the Bureau of Edu- 
cation; and in the interest of the other a separate department—that of Agriculture. I 
believe great general good is to flow from the operations of both of these bureaus, if 
properly fostered. I cannot commend to your careful consideration too highly the 
reports of the Commissioners of Education and of Agriculture, nor urge too strongly 
such liberal legislation as to secure their efficiency. 
The following paragraph, which appeared in the “Albany Cultivator 
and Country Gentleman” for December 1, 1870, p. 756, shows that the 
importance of carrying out the project above stated is already felt: 
The praise of the weather is on all tongues. And justly, for nothing could be more 
conducive to health or better for business. * * * And here let me call the atten- 
tion of Mr, Commissioner Capron to how much could be done in the interest of agrieul- 
ture, if the weather reports, now gathered by the Government at the principal lake 
and sea-coast cities, were enlarged so as to embrace reports also from the capital of 
each interior State. As published now, these reports are useful only to the maritime 
classes; but were they increased, as here suggested, they might be collated and formu- 
lated so as to give a juster idea of the condition and yield of crops than could be ob- 
tained in any other manner. ‘The time is at hand when the scientific corps at agricul- 
tural colleges, noting carefully the phenomena of the weather, will be able to publish 
weekly or monthly, as the case may be, accurate estimates of harvested and incoming 
crops. Then would it not be a feather in the cap of the Department of Agriculture if 
in this business it took the initiative ? 
An exposition of this plan having been read before the Farmers’ Club 
of the American Institute on the 27th of December, 1870, the discussion 
following brought out this illustrative statement of facts from Mr. F. D. 
Curtis: , 
I wish to reduce the ideas in the paper of Professor Poéy to my own practical notion 
of things. I have a field, sloping to the north, which, a few years ago, I observed, was 
covered with moss growing underneath the clover. Older farmers than I said the un- 
usual circumstance was caused by the dampness underneath the clover; others gave it 
as their opinion that the land was sour. None of them were right. I have reseeded 
the lot with timothy and orchard grass, which does away with the cloyer theory. A 
hundred dollars’ worth of fresh lime has been spread over the surface of the field to 
warm and sweeten the soil, and last summer was an exceedingly dry one, but still the 
moss exists; therefore it must be the result cf climatic or atmospheric laws which no 
farmer understands, and they would like to have some one somewhere to study out 
these mysteries and teach them the laws of their growth and prevention. 
A committee, consisting of Messrs. Lyman, Whitney, Bragdon, Cur- 
tis, and Reade, appointed to consider this subject, reported at the ses- 
sion of the 17th of January, 1871, as follows: 
Your committee consider that the aboye suggestions of Professor Poéy are entitled 
to careful consideration by the farmers of this country, and especially those who are 
shaping the policy and establishing the grades of our agricultural schools. All con- 
sider the subject of sufficient importance to recommend that General Capron commu- 
nicate the plaus of Professor Poéy to the presidents of these colleges, and urge them to 
provide for the careful study and accurate noting of meteorological facts in every part 
of the republic. 
At the session of the 21st of March, the following letter from the 
Hon. Horace Capron, Commissioner of Agriculture, to the secretary of 
the Farmers’ Club, was read: 
*_ I beg leave to acknowledge the receipt of a report of a committee of the American 
Institute Farmers’ Club on a communication from Professor André Poéy on the subject 
of meteorology, in which this Department is recommended to communicate the plans 
of Professor Poéy to the presidents of agricultural colleges, and urge the adoption of 
some'such plan of observation as is therein recommended. I have always looked upon 
the relations of meteorology and practical agriculture as necessarily very close, and 
that by just so much as our knowledge of that science is increased shall we be likely 
