Septembee 2, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



283 



stations and 152 signal stations of the 

 "Weather Bureau. There are also 152 meat- 

 inspection stations in diiferent towns and 

 cities of the country, 21 quarantine stations 

 for imported cattle, 9 stations for inspecting 

 exported stock and 19 for inspecting stock 

 for Texas fever. The division of statistics 

 affords a measure of protection against 

 combination and extortion in buying and 

 selling the products of agriculture. "When 

 we consider the large proportion of our 

 population engaged in industries which this 

 department serves, and the importance of 

 these industries to our national budget, 

 may we not reasonably be surprised that 

 the department is crippled by the parsimony 

 of Congress with regard to salaries? On 

 account of the low salaries authorized for 

 scientific and technical services, the depart- 

 ment is constantly losing some of its 

 ablest and best workers. Apart from the 

 "Weather Bureau, which is now one of its 

 divisions, the cost of the Department of 

 Agriculture during the financial year 1896- 

 97 was rather more than two millions of 

 dollars — about the cost of one day of the 

 war with Spain. 



Next to agriculture in importance to the 

 country comes the mining of coal and the 

 metallic ores. The mineral wealth of the 

 "United States, including coal, is immeasur- 

 able, and there lie the foundations of all our 

 manufacturing industries, and of the house- 

 hold comfort with which our population 

 is so greatly blessed. One would naturally 

 have supposed that the government of the 

 "United States would have been inclined to 

 spend liberally on the discovery and investi- 

 gation of our mineral resources, but such 

 has not been the history of the Geological 

 Survey of the United States. The expendi- 

 ture upon it has never been generous, and 

 has often been parsimonious. For the av- 

 erage of the five years 1893-97 the ex- 

 penditures of the government on the Geo- 

 logical Survey and the issue of geological 



maps was about $450,000 a year, or less 

 than the cost of six hours' war with Spain 

 during the last four months. 



The "Weather Bureau of the "United 

 States, on which the nation spends less 

 than a million dollars a year, contributes 

 greatly to the comfort and health of the 

 people and to the protection of their prop- 

 erty, yet its number of stations for weather 

 observation is manifestly insufficient, and 

 the number of places at which warnings 

 are conspicuously given is also insufficient. 

 In the year ending June 30, 1897, that is, 

 before the war, the country spent twice as 

 much on mere repairs of naval vessels as it 

 did on the "Weather Bureau. 



The ioast and Geodetic Survey of the U 

 United States has often been crippled in its 

 work by lack of steady, timely and ade- 

 quate appropriations. Its annual cost for 

 the five years 1893-97 averaged $418,000, 

 or only a little over what it cost to main- 

 tain in commission the armored cruiser New 

 York for the year 1^97. ^/ 



A new department of our government 

 ought to be at once organized to secure the 

 permanent protection and utilization of the 

 forests on the national domain. The expe- 

 rience of other nations has already demon- 

 strated that well-managed national forest 

 reserves not only pay their expenses, but 

 yield a revenue. The objects of such forest 

 administration are of the utmost impor- 

 tance to a mining and farming population, 

 being briefly, to ensure a permanent supply 

 of timber, to protect the water-supply in 

 agricultural regions adjacent to the forests, 

 to prevent floods and to store water which 

 in arid and semi-arid regions can subse- 

 quently be utilized for irrigation. The 

 efforts thus far made to protect the national 

 property in forests have not been successful, 

 the greatest destruction being wrought, 

 first, by fire, and secondly, by pasturage, 

 but much harm being done by simple steal- 

 ing of the forest product in districts where 



