DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 613 



the Patent Office. These gentlemen met at the Patent Office 

 on the 3d of January, 1859, and continued in session eight days. 

 The general plan of operations which had been pursued by the 

 agricultural division of the office was unanimously approved. 



Hon. William D. Bishop, of Connecticut, succeeded Mr. 

 Holt, May 23, 1859, an ^ he in turn was succeeded, February 16, 

 i860, by Hon. Philip F. Thomas, of Maryland. With the 

 retirement of Mr. Holt, Mr. Browne ceased to edit the reports. 

 The leading features of Mr. Bishop's report for the year 1859 

 corresponded substantially with those of the reports for the 

 preceding ten years. It was announced that there had been 

 propagated, and were ready for distribution, 30,000 well-rooted 

 tea plants, 12,000 foreign and domestic grape vines, and many 

 other valuable exotic plants. Mr. Thomas resigned December 

 13, 1860, and issued no report. The report for 1860 was edited 

 by Hon. Thomas G. Clemson, superintendent of the agricult- 

 ural division. 



From December 14, 1860, to March 28, 1861, S. T. Shugert, 

 Esq., was acting commissioner. He was succeeded, on the date 

 last named, by Hon. David P. Holloway, of Indiana, whose an- 

 nual report, appearing in the following year (1862), was the most 

 complete agricultural manual the Patent Office had yet issued. 



During Mr. Holloway's administration the Department of 

 Agriculture was organized. 



On the 1 5th of May, 1862, the act establishing the " Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture" became a law, and on the ist day of July 

 the department was formally organized, in the rooms of the 

 Patent Office previously occupied by the agricultural division of 

 that bureau. The first section of the act defined the "general 

 designs and duties " of the department, and the succeeding 

 sections provided for the appointment, by the President, of a 

 chief executive officer, to be styled the " Commissioner of 

 Agriculture." It was not, however, provided that the commis- 

 sioner, although the head of an independent department of the 

 government, should be a member of the Cabinet. 



Hon. Isaac Newton, of Pennsylvania, who had been, since 

 early in 1861, the superintendent of the agricultural division of 

 the Patent Office, was appointed by President Lincoln the first 

 Commissioner of Agriculture. 



