16 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



This condition of things makes more imperative every year the endeavor 

 to preserve the forests which form a part of the public domain, and so 

 to guard and control them bylaw as to make them of greatest and most 

 lasting benefit to the country. 



Since the appropriation was made by Congress for the purpose of 

 aiding the Centennial Exposition at New Orleans, this Bureau has 

 been engaged in the endeavor to exhibit one of the practical and eco- 

 nomic aspects of forestry by securing for that exposition specimens of the 

 manufactured products of the forests. For this purpose wood- working 

 factories in various parts of the country have been visited or have been 

 reached by means of correspondence, and as the result a great variety 

 of articles of most useful and interesting character have been secured, 

 which, when brought together, cannot fail to impress the beholder with 

 a new sense of the value and importance of our woodlands. From the 

 toy that amuses the child on the floor to the ship that breasts the ocean 

 storms in interchanging the commodities of the nations, the forests will 

 thus be seen to minister to us in ways almost innumerable. 



An instructive contribution to the New Orleans Exposition will also 

 be made by the Bureau in the form of a grove of living trees trans- 

 planted from the arid region of the West, where it has been held that 

 trees could not be made to grow on account of the limited amount of 

 rainfall. This transplanted grove will be an ocular demonstration that 

 the establishment of trees both for ornamental and forest purposes can 

 be pushed much farther along the dry western plains than has been 

 supposed, and will be a great encouragement to their settlement* 



DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS. 



Congress, at its last session, provided for the printing of 400,000 

 copies of the Annual Eeport of the Department, and also for the print- 

 ing of 50,000 copies of the First Annual Eeport of the Bureau of Ani- 

 mal Industry. The following-named special and miscellaneous reports 

 have been issued by the Department during the current year: 



BUREAU OF STATISTICS— NEW SERIES. 



No. copies 

 printed. 



No. 4. Report upon the numbers and values of farm animals, on certain 

 causes affecting wages of farm labor, and on freight rates of 

 transportatioD companies. February, 1884, 56 pp., octavo 11,000 



No. 5. Report on the distribution and consumption of corn and wheat, and 

 the rates of transportation of farm products. March, 1884, 44 

 pp., octavo — 11,000 



No. 6. Report of the area of winter grain, the condition of farm animals, 

 and freight rates of transportaion companies. April, 1884, 48 

 pp., octavo 11, 000 



No. 7. Report of the condition of winter grain, the progress of cotton plant- 

 ing, and estimates of cereals of 1883, with freight rates of trans- 

 portation companies. May, 1884, 36 pp., octavo 13.000 



