TWENTY -FIFTH CONGRESS, 1837-1839. 149 



or monstrosity. Under the botanical division is necessarily included, also, whatever 

 pertains to horticulture and the management of fruit in all its varieties. 



Zoology applied to agricultural purposes would make known the rearing and 

 treatment of every species of useful domestic animals, whether bird or quadruped; 

 the kinds of labor to which any of them may be applied while living; the diseases, 

 contagious or otherwise, to which they may be liable; the value and uses of their 

 living products, as milk, wool, hair, or feathers, and the importance to man of their 

 flesh, sinews, bones, horns, and pelage, when slaughtered. 



The best methods of domesticating or naturalizing desirable species of animals not 

 now in use in this country, and improving the breeds of all such as may be suscep- 

 tible of melioration, would likewise come under the cognizance of this department. 

 To the same would pertain an examination of such of the inferior races of animals 

 which are either useful, as the bee and the silkworm, or noxious and destructive, as 

 the Hessian fly, the locust, the weevil, and the canker worm, as well as of those 

 parasitic insects which often prove so annoying and destructive to the larger animals, 

 together with the methods of their extermination. In short, an agricultural study 

 of animal beings must deal with the physiology and structure of each race in every 

 stage of its existence. How wide is this field of inquiry, and how momentous to the 

 interests of agriculture, needs not to be demonstrated. 



But to the chemist is assigned, in connection with agriculture, a branch of duty 

 not less important, and, if anything, more difficult, than to either of the preceding. 

 To him belongs not only the duty of ascertaining the constituents of every soil, and 

 the ingredients which render it either barren or fertile, which adapt it to peculiar 

 productions, which cause it to require more or less labor in the tillage, but also that 

 of determining the nature of the dressing which may restore it w r hen exhausted, 

 whether the same should consist of animal, vegetable, or mineral substances, and in 

 what proportions. He must also examine the constituents, immediate and ultimate, 

 of each vegetable, and trace the relation between the character of a soil and that of 

 the vegetable substances which it is capable of producing. 



In various parts of our country it is well known that shell and other limestones, 

 marl, gypsum, and alluvial deposits of various kinds are resorted to for furnishing 

 the dressings of worn-out or barren soils; and yet it is equally well known that not 

 every soil is alike benefited by the same dressing. Even among the marls, some 

 produce an effect absolutely injurious on the very soils which others would fertilize 

 in a high degree. Hence the importance of designating, by means of chemical 

 analysis, the fertilizing or nonfertilizing properties of every compost used in the 

 dressing of land, its adaptation to each soil, and its utility as applied to each produc- 

 tion which that soil is designed to yield. 



Though almost unknown in our country, and unapplied to its industry, the subject 

 of agricultural chemistry has not been deemed unworthy to engage the best talents 

 of European chemists. In proof of this, we need only recur to the names of Henry 

 and Ure and the immortal Davy. 



The three branches of agricultural science above described would in their several 

 collections present an exhibition of exceeding interest, and one every way worthy to 

 fix the attention of the multitudes of citizens who annually visit the seat of Govern- 

 ment, as well as of the assembled representatives of the people. 



Stored in appropriate receptacles would be found the botanical treasures of every 

 portion of our Territory and the useful products of every foreign clime; so that, 

 while our conservatory of arts and trades, now rising with increased splendor from 

 the ashes of its late conflagration, shall receive the monuments of inventive genius, 

 the contemplated depository of our natural riches would soon vie with it in curiosi- 

 ties and in usefulness. 



2. Of the importance to the military interests of the country of an institution like 

 that herein proposed no doubt can be entertained when we take into view the great 



