UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTUj 
Bureau of Plant Industry 
Expenditure Authorization 
No.534-P 
Washington, July 1st, 1919. 
Mr. J. B. Norton, Agricultural Explorer, 
Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction 
Authority is hereby granted you to incur expenses, in ac¬ 
cordance with the Fiscal Regulations of the Department, for the 
purposes enumerated and during the period named below, not to ex¬ 
ceed 45,000.00, to be paid from the appropriation General Expenses, 
Bureau of Plant Industry, 1920 (Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction). 
You are authorized to carry on an agricultural exploration 
in Siberia, Japan, and China, to secure rare and valuable seeds, 
hardy fruits, trees, shrubs, vines and other valuable plant material, 
for introduction and cultivation in this country, and information 
concerning same. 
If deemed necessary you are authorized to proceed to Manila, 
Philippine Islands, for the purpose of consulting the herbarium 
there of South Chinese plants. 
As temporary Special Disbursing Agent you are authorized to 
pay your own salary outside the United States at a rate of $3,860.00 
per annum (which will also include your personal subsistence while 
away from the Unitea States, wherever subsistence is not furnished 
in kind, as on board a steamer); to pay necessary transportation 
expenses of every description of yourself and assistants, and your 
equipment and materials of all kinds, including customary fees of 
stewards, porters, and others; to employ guides, interpreters, 
laborers and other assistants and pay for their subsistence and 
transportation; to collect, purchase or procure seeds, plants, and 
plant materials; to purchase or pay for all supplies and apparatus 
of yourself and assistants requisite for exploration work, including 
medicines, hire orpurchase of pack animals and their accoutrements, 
wagons and other means of conveyance; to pay freight expenses, dragage, 
storage and other charges on equipment .seeds, plants and other 
public property and to incur such other expenses as may be found 
necessary for the success of the work. 
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In order to facilitate your work in'foreign countries, 
especially in regions remote from the established routes of 
European travel, ana to enable you to avoid arousing the suspicion 
of natives with whom you will have to deal, which would cause 
serious embarrassment and might wholly defeat the object of the 
