About fifty years ago, at the request of Hon. H. E. Ellsworth, the sum of one thousand dollars was set apart in the interest of agriculture; now there is a Department of Agriculture, and its Secretary is a member of the President's Cabinet.

The present Secretary of this department is Hon. James Wilson, of Iowa. He served several terms in Congress, was Regent of the State University of Iowa, and for six years prior to his present appointment was Director of the Iowa Experimental Station and professor of agriculture at the Iowa Agricultural College, Ames, Iowa.

The Department of Agriculture consists of twenty different divisions, each one of which is worthy of a complete chapter. The department has many buildings, but the main one stands within the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, in a bower of blooming plants and clinging vines. Every kind of plant from the tropics to the Arctic Circle which can be made to grow in this climate can be found in this department.

Studies in ornamentation, best methods of grafting, pruning, budding, hybridizing, and treating diseases of plants, trees, and animals are thoroughly investigated at its experimental stations.

Vegetable and flower seeds, grass seeds, plants, trees, bulbs, and grape-vines are distributed in the department through the Senators, members, and delegates of Congress. By this means the best varieties of the vegetable kingdom are carried throughout the United States. During the coming year the country will be more carefully districted, and only such seeds and plants as have been thoroughly acclimated will be sent to the several districts.

Members of Congress from cities exchange their quota of vegetable and crop seeds for flower seeds, thus leaving more of the former for members with a farming constituency.

The following statement shows the amounts of seeds, bulbs, plants, and trees, so far as the allotments have been made, for a recent fiscal year:

Each Senator, member, and delegate will receive—

For seed distributed alone the government appropriates $270,000. Think of the beneficence of that! The rarest and best seeds that money can buy will be planted in every State and Territory of this country. Experts are continually sent abroad to find new cereals, fruits trees, animals, and flowers.

The department has at least one correspondent in every county of the United States through whom the statistics on acreage, quality of crops, and success of experiments are reported at stated times.

All questions pertaining to farming are answered by this department. If a man desires to buy a farm in Kansas or Alaska, a portion of the country of which he knows little, the department will tell him of the climate, the crops likely to be remunerative, and the obstacles of soil or climate to overcome. A chemist will analyze the soil for him, tell him what it contains, and what it needs to produce certain crops. An entomologist will tell him the insects prevalent which may destroy his crops. The scientist will also tell him how to destroy the inserts, what birds to encourage and what to banish.

At Summerville, S. C., the government has a tea farm with a fully equipped factory, and the tea produced is claimed by experts to equal the best imported article. This year one thousand acres of rice land near Charleston, S. C., will be put in tea. The cost of producing American tea is about fifteen cents a pound; the yield is four hundred pounds to the acre, the wholesale selling price forty to fifty cents per pound, and the retail price seventy-five cents to one dollar per pound.

In the wheat-growing States the government is trying a fine variety of macaroni wheat, in order to compete successfully with the imported article, of which $8,000,000 worth enters this country annually.

In the cotton States the government is trying Egyptian cotton, which is now imported to the value of $8,000,000 annually.

In Arizona and other dry tracts dates and other Egyptian fruits are being successfully acclimated. In the hot states rubber, coffee, bananas, and cocoa are being tried.

Our fruit markets are being extended into Europe, and special agents and consuls are using every influence to enlarge this market. At the Paris Exposition our pears, apples, peaches, and plums were a never-ending surprise to people of all lands. Californians made us all proud of them by their lavish generosity, and the result has been that pears and apples have been sent in large quantities to Southern Europe, also to Russia and Siberia.

New cottons are being sent throughout the South, new prunes and plums along the Pacific Coast. Important experiments are being made in sugar producing. Pineapples are being acclimated in Florida, plants which produce bay rum and various perfumes are being introduced in several states, and olives from Italy are being tried in Porto Rico and the Philippines.

In many different States soils have been examined. In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, it was found certain soils contain ingredients to produce the finest Cuban tobacco, and other soil regarded as useless was shown to be capable of producing certain rare plants. Every state should call for this kind of analytic help, until we make the United States the garden of the world.