1202 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
Mr. Haron. I beg the gentleman’s pardon again; they did not nomi- 
nate him. 
Mr. Hempuiny. Well, whether they did or not, he ran on the Demo- 
cratic ticket, and the Democrats voted for him as a representative of 
Democracy, and he is an honorable man so far as I know his record. 
He reported in favor of this measure, and spoke in behalf of it in the 
Senate of the United States in 1866, and the question has been before 
Congress ever since that time. It was before the last Congress, and 
has been before every Congress for a long time, and will be before all 
Congresses to come, I suppose, until some definite action is taken in 
regard to it. I hope, therefore, the members of the House will vote 
upon this as a pure business transaction without reference to the 
other irrelevant questions which have been sought to be lugged into 
the debate. 
I yield the balance of the time back to the gentleman from Iowa. 
Mr. Henperson, of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, this debate has been run- 
ning about in the way I wanted it to run, because I desired an expres- 
sion of sentiment on the part of the House in regard to this proposition. 
There are one or two things in connection with the matter which 
either are not understood or which seem to be obscure to the minds 
of some gentlemen, and to which I desire to call the attention of the 
House briefly. The first parties that agitated the question of a zoologi- 
cal park or garden in this city were gentlemen connected with the 
Smithsonian Institution, and the central figure among them was Mr. 
Hornaday, a very intelligent gentleman, a man of large experience, 
who spent much time in the jungles of Africa and in other places, and 
felt a patriotic interest in preserving the remaining animals of this 
country. 
He came before the Committee on Appropriations with the proposi- 
tion, but the committee rejected it, and I was influenced somewhat by 
the idea suggested by my friend from Georgia at the time that proba- 
bly there was a real-estate scheme back of the proposition. I think | 
this House knows pretty well the fact that I have been quite an aggres- 
sive party in making attacks on such things as that when I thought 
they had as an inspiring motive such underlying influences. I have 
fought them vigorously, and have had some experience and hard fights 
in conferences with my friend from West Virginia [Mr. Wilson] on 
the same question. But after looking into this matter my investiga- 
tion satisfied me that the real-estate speculators were against the park. 
Now, the Senate has put on an amendment here providing for a 200- 
acre proposition. The citizens finding it at that stage, took it up and 
wanted to enlarge the appropriation into a national park, keeping the 
zoological garden as a feature of it. I had no part in getting up the 
bill or in reporting it, not being a member at that time of the District 
Committee, favoring the national part. So far as I have investigated | 
