REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. CXI 



been called upon to assist in prosecuting the offenders. Fifty-seven 

 cases have been investigated, of which 27 have been referred 

 for action to the Department of Justice, but whenever possible the 

 evidence has been placed in the hands of State authorities. For the 

 first time in the history of game protection it has been possible to 

 secure convictions in cases involving illegal shipment of game months 

 after the offenses were committed, and with evidence obtained a thou- 

 sand miles or more from the point of shipment. 



NEED OF MORE LIBERAL APPROPRIATION. 



Again it seems necessary to call attention to the insufficient appro- 

 priation by reason of which the Biological Survey is obliged to carry 

 on its field work in a piecemeal way, doing a little each season and 

 returning the next year to the same region. The work could be done 

 for considerably less money if the survey of a particular area could 

 be completed at one time. A special effort has been made to carry 

 the prairie dog investigation to a successful conclusion, but this 

 requires field work on the Great Plains in the early spring, for which 

 no funds are available. Owing to the same cause the Biological Survey 

 has been forced to decline requests from several States for cooperation 

 in carrying on local biological surveys. Such cooperative surveys 

 would hasten the completion of the zone and crop maps, and would be 

 of material service both to the States interested and to the General 

 Government. 



DIVISION OF STATISTICS. 



With a smaller appropriation available for its work than was 

 expended for a like purpose in any fiscal year from 1891 to 1898, inclu- 

 sive, the Division of Statistics has endeavored to meet the ever-growing 

 demand for statistics of the agricultural industry. It handled during 

 the fiscal year nearly 2,500,000 returns from a corps of correspondents 

 numbering about 250,000, the results of its work appearing in 18 

 separate reports, of which over 1,500,000 copies were printed. 



While its work has consisted largely, as heretofore, of the prepara- 

 tion of reports relative to the principal products of the soil, including 

 the extent and geographical distribution of the area of production, the 

 condition and prospects of the crop during the growing season, and 

 the quantity, quality, and disposition of the product harvested, it has 

 also included reports on other branches of rural economics, such as 

 the cost of transportation, the prices of agricultural products, the 

 wages of farm labor, and the extent to which the principle of coopera- 

 tion has been applied to different branches of the agricultural industry. 



There is an urgent demand from many different directions for a 

 substantial broadening of the scope of the work of this Division. Only 

 the insufficiency of the appropriation prevents the live stock and live- 

 stock products of the country — an interest so enormous that after sat- 



