THIRTY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 1859-61. 



Mr. GRIMES. What is the appropriation of $6,000 for? 

 Mr. FESSENDEN. For putting them in order and arrang- 

 ing them. 



Mr. CAMERON. I move to strike out the appropriation. 

 I have no doubt if these things are of any use, scientific 

 people will be glad to get them, and lam willing to let them-v 

 have them, if they will take them. f 



Mr. BICE. The question strikes me in two different as- 

 pects, a personal and an official one. If we have a right to 

 make an appropriation for distributing stuffed snakes, and 

 the various other things that may be collected and brought 

 here, why have we not a right to make an appropriation for 

 distributing the models in the Patent Office ; or distributing 

 hoes, plows, and other implements ? This has all grown 

 out of an infraction, in my opinion, of the Constitution, by- 

 distributing seeds. We must stop somewhere. If you can. 

 do this under the Constitution, what can you not do ? 

 know that the Smithsonian Institution has done great good 

 for the country. I am applied to daily, for books published 

 by it, and I know that they are valuable ; but it is not, un- 

 der the Constitution, a Government institution. Let us 

 stop somewhere, and I think we might as well stop here as 

 anywhere. 



Mr HALE. I think so too. I should like the country to 

 know' how much we have spent for printing pictures of bugs, 

 reptiles, &c., that these exploring expeditions have brought, 

 here We published eleven or twelve volumes of the ex- 

 ploring expedition, illustrated with pictures of bugs, snakes, 

 and reptiles. It has cost us millions of dollars to print those 

 pictures, and now we are going to spend $10,000 to distrib- 

 ute them after spending millions to print pictures of them. 

 The thing is all wrong, sir. 



Mr MASON. Mr. President, I have been for many years - 

 one of the regents of this institution, under the appoint- 

 ment of the Senate, in connection with my friend from 

 Maryland. We know that it is a public trust; one we 

 think of a sacred character. We know as a fact, and it 

 appears in the records of that institution, that these speci- 

 mens of natural history, sent from the Patent Office to the 

 Smithsonian Institution, were sent there ^f *e .remou- 

 strances, repeated from year to year ot that ^titutioii 

 and if either the Senator from Pennsylvania or he Senator 

 from New Hampshire, or any gentleman who thinks with 

 them would introduce an amendment to this bill directing 



