FIFTY-FIRST CONGRESS, 1889-1891. 1363 
adjacent to it, I should think it would be a disadvantage. Surely if I 
owned property adjoining a zoological park I would be disposed to sell 
it at a much less price than if it was not located near such a park filled 
with wild animals. 
I can not, therefore, see any propriety whatever in charging any of 
the benefits of this park either to the adjacent landholders or the 
people of the District of Columbia. This is the seat of the National 
Government, the canital of a great nation, and for one I feel like mak- 
ing it worthy of a nation of a 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 people. 
Among other things, I think it proper that Congress should establish 
a zoological park to preserve the types of the animals that originally 
inhabited this continent and that are fast fading away. 
Iam opposed to the House amendments, but if it is impossible to 
pass the bill without concurring in them, under that restraint I shall 
vote for the bill as it comes from the other House. 
I will add that the Senator from Kentucky himself, who is seated in 
front of me [Mr. Blackburn], may remember that near the village in 
which we were both born there was a park preserved by one of the 
original settlers of that State, in which the buffalo, the elk, the bear, 
and the deer were preserved in large numbers, and it became a great 
object of interest and a curiosity not only to the people in that vicinity, 
but to the people from the Eastern States, many of whom came there 
to see that large park filled with these animals. 
lam sure if this park were established here it would be an object of 
interest, not to the people of the District of Columbia who are engaged 
in their business here, nor to the members of Congress who pass but a 
few years of their lives here, but to the scientific men of the whole 
country who might be disposed to investigate the laws that relate to 
these wild animals and all other animals in connection with the dis- 
covery of the truth in every direction. 
Mr. W. M. Srewarr. With regard to this particular appropriation, it 
seems to me that it is proper for the United States to bear all of the 
expense for the reasons assigned by the Senator from Louisiana, which 
appear to me to be controlling. But I should like to make a sugges- 
tion. I do not think that the policy of charging the Government with 
half of the expense of the streets in the District by general taxation is 
working well. It occasions at every session of Congress a fierce con- 
flict as to where the money shall be used, and those who are most suc- 
cessful in pressing their claims get their streets improved and the 
others do not. 
The system of improving streets out of a general fund has generally, 
in most of the Western cities at least, been a bad one. I do not know 
how itis here. They tried it on the Pacific coast for many years and 
it led to controversy as to where the money should be appropriated, 
and there was dissatisfaction. They finally passed a law in California 
