152 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
have no divisions in our Bureau now; we simply have offices and our 
offices are all interchangeable. When we find it necessary we can take 
aman in one office and put him in another office and then put him 
somewhere else. Before this we could not do that; we had fences. 
Mr. Bowrz. You have knocked the fence down? 
Mr. Gattoway. Yes. : ; 
Thereupon, at 4.20 o’clock, the committee adjourned until to-morrow, 
Friday, January 8, 1904, at 10.30 o’clock a. m. 
Wasuineton, D. C., January 8, 1904. 
The committee met at 10.35 o’clock, the Hon. James W. Wadsworth 
in the chair. 
There appeared before the committee Mr. Beverly T. Galloway, 
chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture; 
Mr. William J. Spillman, Agrostologist, and Mr. Frederick C. Coville, 
Botanist, of the same Bureau. 
The Cuarrman. Gentlemen, the committee will come to order. 
Doctor Galloway, which one of you gentlemen is next on the pro- 
gramme? 
Mr. Gattoway. Mr. Spillman is next on the programme, and he 
will discuss the work of grass and forage-plant investigations. 
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM J. SPILLMAN, AGROSTOLOGIST. 
Mr. Sprrutman. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have not had charge 
of the grass and forage-plant work of the Government very long, 
having taken charge of it just two years ago, and for that reason Jam 
not as familiar with the work of the Department as some other gen- 
tlemen may be; but I am getting familiar with the grass and forage- 
plant work. There are a number of lines of work of more or less im- 
portance to agriculture in the country. Of the 289,000,000 acres of 
cultivated land in this country 61,000,000 acres are devoted to grass, 
to hay, and to forage plants, and I am dealing largely with that part of 
our agricultural area. In addition there are 124,000,000 acres devoted 
to pasture, and of that area 80 per cent in the United States is wild 
land, used mostly for ranges. 
That is our line of work, with the classes of problems relating to 
the various crops that are grown for hay and fodder. There are also 
some problems connected with putting up hay and marketing it. Then 
there are a number of wild grasses that we are endeavoring to make 
tame grasses. And there are other miscellaneous lines of work that I 
will work up as I come to them in order. 
Now, the work of propagation, I think, is the most important of our 
work at present, particularly that of alfalfa and that of clover. The 
alfalfa crop has received a great deal of attention in our office this 
year; in fact, we could not avoid giving it a great deal of attention. 
About one-half of the correspondence of our office relates to that crop 
alone, and this has been so for the past year and a half, or perhaps 
two years. 
Mr. Scorr. Can you give us some idea of the volume of this cor- 
respondence? 
Mr. Sprtiman. The alfalfa letters will probably run from 10 to 75 
a day, averaging about 35 or 40. Of course we have now some bul- 
letins that have been gotten out which are fairly satisfactory, and in 
