FATaNT-OFFICL RLPORT AND THE POTATO ROT. 13 



should be sorry to think otherwise ; and in respect of the legislation for its gov- 

 ernment, we have deprecated and still deprecate the meanness of the allowance 

 to the Chiefs of its scientific Bureaus, and would defy any clear-headed, honest 

 man, having a tru§ conception of the foundations of public welfare, to say why a 

 man exercising for the Government such faculties as Doctor Page, for exam- 

 ple, or Mr. Kelly, who was driven from the office — is there any good reason 

 why such men should not be as highly rewarded as a full Colonel in the army ? 

 But enough of this. We do not know that we shall ever again advert to this 

 subject, but we hold it to be not only our right but our duty to examine and 

 criticise fearlessly whatever is done by the Government in direct relation to Ag- 

 riculture, and to insist that a Government ferformance designed as a national ex- 

 hibit of the condition, progress and desiderata of American Agriculture, when 

 undertaken as such, shall be done in acknowledgment of and in a style com- 

 mensurate in all respects with the paramount importance of the great concern it 

 is designed to elucidate and uphold ; and not be thrown in as a mere incidental 

 make-weight to the Report of the Bureau of another Department, and made up 

 of shreds and patches, intended to present the most valuable contents of journals 

 which might be had for the merest trifle, and would be subscribed for by all 

 who are worthy of having the cream of them skimmed off by the Government 

 and presented to them for nothing. If these Reports were distributed to persons 

 thirsting for information who were unable to subscribe for the papers from Avhich 

 they are made up, the case would be different. 



We have not been able to get a copy of the last of these Government Annuals 

 issued from the Patent-Office, though we believe some of our more favored 

 brethren have been supplied. We cannot, therefore, speak with exactness as 

 to its volume or contents, but have understood that it bears to its illustrious pre- 

 decessor about the same proportion that a baby whale at the breast does to its 

 huge mamma — for it is a fact, as the whalers of New-Bedford will confirm, 

 that while some fashionable dames, beginning with Her Majesty Queen Victoria, 

 put their young ones out to nurse, these monsters of the deep suckle their own 

 brats. It does not follow, however, that because this last of the Patent-Office 

 progeny has dwarfed to a fourth of the size of the one which went before, that 

 it may not revert again, after a year or two, to its former character and bulki- 

 ness; for a new chapter has been opened in Natural History, by naturalists 

 called " alternate generation," according to which, as we are told, the first progeny 

 bears no resemblance either in form or features to the progenitor, but returns, 

 it may be, in the third or fourth generation, to the form of the primitive parent ; 

 so that a mother may not be represented by her daughter or grand-daughter, but 

 by her great or great-great grand-daughter, who becomes in turn the medium 

 through which the species is perpetuated ; and thus, perhaps, the Patent-Office 

 Report of American Agriculture may return every fourth year to the standard of 

 1845, which, by-the-by, let it be never so well done, would, we should suppose, 

 be quite often enough ; for though individuals may be all the time making dis- 

 coveries and accessions to knowledge in philosophy and the arts, such are weU 

 and properly set forth in the Patent-Office Reports of inventions, nations do not 

 make visible progress bij the year. Even elephants require some twenty months 

 or more for procreation. What we want, in fact, is not a Government annual 

 distillation of newspapers, but a well-digested, comprehensive, well-exectilcd 

 Census, and Normal Schools in each State for the preparation of agricultural 

 teachers on the plan of our military schools, 



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