Missouw 
George 
BOTAWCW- gakbek 
126 
1, DIVISION OF STATISTICS. 
This is the office of publication, whence are issued the annual reports of the Depart¬ 
ment of nearly a quarter of a million copies and a monthly report of twenty-five thou¬ 
sand copies, embracing official data from thousands of correspondents located in nearly 
every county in the Union, regarding the modes of cultivation and prospects of crops. 
These reports, annual as well as monthly, are the most popular and most desired of 
any of the public documents printed by the Government. They are sought for and 
distributed by the foreign legations resident in this country to all the European Govern¬ 
ments. A much larger number of the annual report should be printed for circulation 
among our people, as now half the demand for them cannot be supplied by members- 
of Congress or the Department. ^ 
2. DIVISION QF^^RCULTURAL CHEMISTRY. 
1. This division affords a medium ol correspondence and information between the 
various agricultural societies and farmers; answering queries on samples forwarded, 
as ores, minerals, waters; making chemical examinations of natural products and fer¬ 
tilizers, as marls, peats, &c., and giving advice upon the same. Many hundreds of 
letters are answered every year on these subjects. 
2. It is a means through which any new vegetable products, valuable through their 
chemical constitution, may be examined and brought before public notice as worthy of 
growth in the States. 
3. It is a means whereby large and useful manufactures not existing in this country 
may be brought under the notice of farmers. In this way the growth of the beet for 
sugar has been recommended, and is becoming adopted. Comparatively few experi¬ 
ments in its growth had been tried before the Department entered on the consideration 
of the subject. 
4. By its means chemical examinations of the value and composition of vegetable 
products grown for food in the United States may be conducted on that scale which, 
embracing the area of the whole country, will lead to more valuable and truthful re¬ 
sults than those undertaken by a single State or institution not possessing the exten¬ 
sive communication and correspondence which the Department has. Of this nature is* 
the determination of the nutritive value of cereals grown in the several States', which 
has just been commenced, and which no doubt will yield valuable results. 
3. DIVISION'OF BOTANY. 
The purpose of this division is to give a scientific basis, derived from an accurate 1 
knowledge of the ascertained laws of vegetable growth, on which alone any success¬ 
ful system of progressive agriculture can be founded. This is being accomplished in 
this division by bringing together as far as possible all the varied forms of plants, 
either in a living state or in the preserved form of herbarium specimens. These are 
so arranged that any particular plant oiLclass of plants can be readily found, and the 
relation to allied plants, whether as t^uses or capacity for cultivation, can be ascer¬ 
tained with the least labor. By this arrangement, in connection with works of refer¬ 
ence- giving full accounts of habit, mode of growth, native location, geographical dis¬ 
tribution, changes by cultivation, and uses either for food, medicine, or in the arts,; 
there will be accumulated a fund of reliable information, exceedingly valuable in di • 
recting culture or indicating sources of supplies of desired materials in medicine or 
the arts. It is intended by this division to secure the active cooperation of all work¬ 
ing botanists in this country and abroad, by a proper system of correspondence and 
exchange, and thus to furnish valuable information on the progress of botanical re¬ 
search in its direct relation to horticulture and agriculture. 
4. DIVISION OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
The principal feature of this division is the museum of natural history. This is an 
economic collection, exhibiting the process of manufacture of the raw products of agri¬ 
cultural industry, in which the textile arts, the making of sugars and dyes, and the 
utilization and extension of the primitive products of the earth are illustrated; also 
illustrations of the various transformations of insects, both favorable and inimical to 
vegetation. In this museum are models of the various fruits and specimens of grain, 
&c., of this country. They are intended to represent type specimens of such varieties, 
and to show which kinds are particularly adapted to any particular region, climate, or 
soil. It is intended to represent each State by sections of cases, containing the different 
varieties of fruits, grains, &c., that have been recommended by State boards of agri¬ 
culture as especially adapted for culture in their particular States, thus saving years of 
labor and probable loss to the new settler by exhibiting at one view those varieties 
which have been experimented upon and found to succeed the best. Duplicate collec- 
