TWENTY-FIFTH CONGRESS, 1837-39. 175 



'The labor of research and observation in this department 

 belongs alike to the botanist, the zoologist, and the chemist. 

 The iirst should investigate the physiology and habitudes of 

 all those vegetable productions which constitute so 'large a 

 portion of the products of farming operations, together 

 with the accidents, blights, and diseases, to which they are 

 liable, the insects by which their growth or usefulness may 

 be affected, and the method of securing and reducing to a 

 ^merchantable form the crops of each vegetable, when ma- 

 tured. The introduction of exotic plants, and the treat- 

 ment which may insure their success in our climate, with 

 the method of regulating and varying the succession of 

 crops, to avoid the exhaustion of soils, would appropriately 

 fall under the same branch of the agricultural department. 



The practicability and the proper methods of cultivating 

 the vine, the olive, the mulberry, the sugar beet, the Sisal 

 and Manilla hemp, the New Zealand flax, and other fibrous 

 vegetables fit to furnish textures and cordage, would also 

 appropriately fall under the botanical division of agricultu- 

 ral science. 



The collections in this department would exhibit samples 

 of not only the ordinary and the rare specimens of each 

 plant, but also the diseased individuals and the vegetable 

 monsters of each class, displaying, when practicable, the 

 cause of such disease or monstrosity. Under the botanical 

 division is necessarily included, also, whatever pertains to 

 horticulture and the management of fruit in all its varie- 

 ties. 



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 desira- 

 ble species of animals not now in use in this country, and 

 improving the breeds of all such as may be susceptible of 

 melioration, would likewise come under the cognizance of 

 this department. To the same would pertain an examina- 

 tion of such of the inferior races of animals which are 

 either useful, as the bee and the silk-worm, 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 ani- 



