1374 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
Mr. McComas. It was a ruling on the Post-Office appropriation bill 
made by Speaker Carlisle. 
The SpEaKerR. The gentleman is now recognized, and in the mean- 
time the Chair will examine the point. 
Mr. McComas. Mr. Speaker,.I do not desire to consume much time 
on this proposition, and perhaps if we could have a little more order 
on the floor I may take much less time and no doubt the House would 
be glad of that. 
The SPEAKER. The EerrhlaNsun from Maryland will suspend for a 
moment. Gentlemen will cease conversation and take their seats. 
Mr. McComas. Now, Mr. Speaker, this bill does not appropriate an 
enormous sum of money; the total is $92,000. The objects are not 
local. For the shelter of animals, cages, fences and inclosures, ponds 
for fishes, for water supply and drainage, for maintaining collection, 
food supply, and acquisition and transportation of specimens. That 
is the whole of it. i 
I doubt very much if gentlemen on this floor have been approached 
by anybody living in the District of Columbia in behalf of this measure. 
It is a Senate bill, passed, came to the House, our amendments put 
on without debate, went back to the Senate, there debated extensively, 
but up to this hour no citizen of the District of Columbia has said one 
word to me or written one line about it. 
It is an unfounded statement to call it a District proposition. It is 
a proposition which came from the Smithsonian Institution. It came 
first in the shape of a bill from the Committee on Public Buildings and 
Grounds to establish a national zoological park. It was established, 
and in the hurry and pressure of legislation it was put on as an amend- 
ment in the last Congress to the District of Columbia bill, and being 
there of course one-half of the fund came out of the District of Colum- 
bia. They paid for half of the park without asking for it, without 
demanding it, and in fact without knowing much about it. They gave 
that ground because Congress chose to make them pay for it. 
This is still called a national park, but when you come to get the 
money to pay for animals brought here from Wyoming, from far 
States and Territories, specimens of animals soon to become extinct, 
and brought here to be preserved; when you would provide for the — 
collection you have already back of the Smithsonian in the inclosure 
belonging to the Government, you provide this new place to put them; 
you may have them there as a national collection. 
Mr. Speaker, when you take the view expressed here by other gen- 
tlemen, and take these appropriations and make this simply a District 
of Columbia park, then, in my judgment, you had better abandon the 
whole business, better give back the land that has been purchased, give 
up the whole idea, and not have only a little Washington City park at 
the capital of the nation. Such a plan, in my judgment, would be a 
great mistake. This is already established. 
