REPORT OF THE ARCHITECT. WASHINGTON, November 20, 1868. SIR: I have the honor to report the completion of the work under the contract for erecting, fitting up, and furnishing the new building for the accommodation of the department under your charge. All the work enumerated in the estimate has been done within the limits of the appropriations made by Congress. In executing the work a strict compliance with the letter and spirit of the appropriation bills was adhered to throughout. The appropriation for all the work, properly within the province of the builder, being under one head, it was advertised for according to law, and given out in toto to the lowest responsible bidder. The appropriations subsequently made for fitting out and furnishing the building being under separate heads, were given out directly to mechanics and business men of highest reputation in their different branches. Superior quality of work and material have thus been obtained at very moderate rates. The isolated position of the building has involved a considerable outlay for the connections with the gas-works and water-works of the city, as also for sewerage leading to the Washington city canal. The building is now finished, with the exception of a few rooms in the basement and the attic story, which were not included in the estimates. An abundant supply of gas has been provided for, since it forms the heating power for the operations in the laboratory. Aside from the supply of water for the accommodation of the office rooms, laboratory, closets, and boilers, pipes of extra size have been carried up, feeding fire-plugs in the several stories. A steam-heating apparatus is in successful operation; the boilers being of sufficient size to heat also the attic story when finished. All the principal rooms and corridors of the building have been laid off in chaste panels, painted in encaustic oil colors, the ceiling being frescoed. The vestibule and main staircase have received a strictly artis tic finish. The large hall in the second story, appropriated to the museum of agriculture, has been frescoed with due regard to its national importance, the coat of arms of the United States, surrounded by the escutcheons of the thirty-seven States of the Union, taking a prominent part in the embellishment. The American wood-hanging, that ingenious new patent which makes the products of the forest in their primeval beauty directly subservient to the highest efforts of the decorator, appeared peculiarly fitting, and has been applied for the finish of the suite of rooms occupied by the Commissioner. Candelabras and massive chandeliers have been put up at all places where there was an immediate necessity for them. All the office rooms of the building have been furnished with substantial carpets, and the desks, furniture, and cases, have been replenished to the full extent of the means at command. The laboratory has also been fitted out of the appropriation for the building with a fine set of new instruments and apparatus, which was imperatively required for the transaction of the chemist's operations. The museum has been partly filled with absolutely dust-proof cases of solid walnut shaped in the best style of the art, each case being glazed with three hundred square feet of pure white glass, and provided with the most approved bronzed locks and fastenings. The insufficiency of the appropriation could not have been construed to require a full supply of indifferent material and workmanship. The sum total of all the appropriations expended, inclusive of sewerage, furniture, carpets, and scientific apparatus for laboratory, is $140,420, and the building contains five hundred and sixty-five thousand cubic feet of available space. The cost is, therefore, but twenty-four and threequarter cents per cubic foot, which compares most favorably with any similar edifice erected by government or private individuals. ADOLPH CLUSS, Architect. Hon. HORACE CAPRON, Commissioner of Agriculture. REPORT OF THE STATISTICIAN. SIR: I have the satisfaction of reporting another year of agricultural prosperity, in which garners have been full, and food products for the sustenance of forty millions of human beings have been abundant, and within the means of the humblest, while prices have been moderately remunerative to the producer. The tendency of population to the cities and to unproductive and speculative employments is less marked than heretofore; the young man, looking for a career of business, now turns to agriculture as an industry worthy of his education and aspiration. The capitalist, unlike the speculator holding as a desert thousands of fertile acres, now, sometimes, enters the arena of agriculture, and shows the farmer, doubtful of the profit of his business, that a man of brains and means can legitimately hold and thoroughly and profitably cultivate ten thousand acres. The defeated warrior in a cause forever lost is patiently and cheerfully following a war-horse that is now a plow-horse; and the freedman, unused as he is to self-control and proverbially unmindful of his coming wants, is more faithful and efficient as a free laborer than he was in previous years. Invention and mechanical skill were never more active and beneficent in their gifts to productive industry. All these favorable indications point to increased abundance in the future to meet the requirements of a rapidly increasing population, and a more ample and luxurious style of living. The approaching completion of the Pacific railroad is already opening to cultivation the fertile plains that were formerly held as deserts, and the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, enlarging our field for the collection of agricultural statistics, and furnishing home supplies to the miners and railroad builders of the new west. The extent and constantly changing condition of our vast territory render attempts at detailed estimates of production somewhat hazardous; yet, so far as opportunity has been afforded for verification, the results have been quite satisfactory. As to the new and rapidly growing settlements of the West which were scarcely commenced at the date of the last census, it is simply impossible to attain a high degree of accuracy without a careful census annually." The usual tabulations of estimates are preceded by more comprehensive statements concerning the principal crops of the country. WHEAT. A disposition to increase the breadth of wheat-planting was evident early in the season, and in all parts of the country. New England felt the impulse slightly in the spring sowing, though the eastern crop scarcely affects the grand aggregate. The increase was mainly in winter wheat, except in Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska. Texas failed to attain the acreage of the previous year, and Kentucky and Wisconsin scarcely equalled their area in 1868. The early reports of condition were generally favorable, and noted by the absence of winter-killing, except to a very limited extent, principally in Kentucky and Tennessee. Rust was prevalent only in small areas, and to a slight extent; and was more frequently reported in the States between Maryland and Georgia, and in Kentucky, than elsewhere. In June the prospect was unusually cheering, promising a better yield than in any season since 1863, and with a larger acreage than ever before, rendering probable an aggregate production of nearly a bushel per capita more than the supply of the previous year. The excessive heat in the latter part of June and the month of July, which served to perfect the grain in deep, well drained soils, wrought decided injury in checking the full growth of the stalk and shriveling the ripening kernels, in loose prairie soils, and in undrained, surface-scratched fields, so numerous in the defective cultivation of the present day. There was little complaint of insect attacks, and quite as little loss from blight and rust, or casualties of any kind, yet the loss to production by this unsuitableness of temperature to soil and cultivation was probably not less than twenty millions of bushels. The estimated increase over the previous crop (of 212,000,000) was about 18,000,000, the aggregate production of 1868 being estimated in round numbers at 230,000,000 bushels. This increase was obtained west of the Mississippi, the older States failing to furnish the quantity per capita produced in 1867-failing to advance with increase of population. Progress of wheat-growing westward.-The progress of wheat-growing westward is a significant feature of our agriculture. In nine years, since 1859, it has been out of all proportion to the increase of population in the same section. West of the Mississippi, in 1859, the quantity harvested was about 25,000,000 bushels; in 1867 it had increased to 65,000,000 bushels; and in 1868 the product was 70,000,000 bushels. Nine years ago the proportion produced was but fourteen per cent.; now it is thirty per cent. of the total product. At this rate of increase more than half of the wheat of the country, ere many years shall elapse, will be grown west of the Mississippi-probably before this western section shall have half the population of the area east of it. A comparison of the movement of wheat production in some of the principal wheat-growing States will illustrate this state of facts: The wheat production of the three States first named, as shown above, is mainly the growth of the past twenty years; that of Illinois, so rapidly progressive between 1849 and 1859, has made a slow advance since, while the product of Ohio and Indiana, as compared with the advance of population, is an actual reduction, notwithstanding the fact that there are millions of acres in the former State yet in original forest, and in the latter a still larger area, both in forest and prairie, not yet subdued by the plow. The following statement, furnished by J. M. Shaffer, secretary of the Iowa Agricultural Society, shows the rapidly increasing quantity of surplus wheat shipped (by rail only) from Iowa: 1865 1866. Bushels. .3, 331, 769 1867 ....... Bushels. .6, 539, 628 .8,843, 162 The reason for this tendency is obvious. The pioneer upon the prairies is a wheat-grower, because wheat is a cash crop, and demands a small outlay of labor; he depends upon its proceeds, not only for a living, but for farm improvements, the purchase of stock and farm implements, and for the erection of a farm-house in place of the log shanty, and for barns and shelters instead of straw-covered sheds and straw stacks. He knows there is danger of reducing the productive value of his land, but its original cost was an insignificant fraction of its intrinsic value, which is more than repaid by the net proceeds of a single crop. He cares little for a small diminution of productive capacity, while he can fence and stock his farm, and place money in bank, from the sale of successive crops of wheat, and then sell the naked land for tenfold its original cost. Immediate returns, with the least labor and capital, are the object of the pioneer. As an expedient, for a poor man, the present practice may be tolerated; as a regular system of farm management, it is reprehensible and ruinous. It will doubtless continue in vogue till our virgin wheat lands are run over by pioneers, who will ultimately be succeeded by scientific farmers who will practice rotation, draining, irrigation, in certain sections, and fertilization from home resources, when the yield will be greatly increased and crops will be surer. The relative area of wheat must therefore continue its decrease eastward, and its increase westward, till our agriculture changes from its chrysalis state to its development as a complete system. At present our agriculture suffers from want of balance between exhaustive and restorative crops; from an undue preponderance of bread crops, cotton, tobacco, and other products consumed away from the farm and never in any of their elements returned to the soil. Root crops and hay, fed upon the farm, tend to increase the producing capacity and market value of land, and may properly be regarded as restorative crops. Corn, when fed to hogs and cattle on the farm, may perhaps be placed in that category, but a large proportion of the crops sent to domestic or foreign markets, whether for human food or feed for horses or other animals, is utterly lost as a fertilizing agency upon the farm. The careful observer will find, upon a survey of the statistics of production in different countries, that wherever the balance is in favor of restorative crops, the yield per acre is highest, and vice versa. He will almost be inclined to regard the yield as necessarily in proportion to the percentage of area in such crops. The following tabulation presents a fair view of the relative percentage of area in restorative and exhaust ive crops in the countries named, and also the average yield of wheat per acre in each of those countries: The English colonies on the Pacific, where land is cheap, follow the exhaustive practice of the United States, rather than the restorative system of the mother country, and the result is shown in a yield of cereals not exceeding our own rate of production. The influence of the Department of Agriculture has been strongly directed to the conservation and recuperation of all the elements of fertility in our soils, and to the encouragement of restorative processes and systems of cropping. If wheat plantations may still predominate beyond the Mississippi and Missouri, there is no excuse for failing to inaugurate a complete system of American agriculture in Illinois and more eastern States, which shall be self-sustaining and tending constantly to increase of production and profit. The evil tendency of slip-shod culture and neglect has often been shown in the rapid decrease of yield and reduction in quality. It is not winter wheat alone that is decreasing in value. The deterioration or spring wheat is shown conspicuously by the inspection returns of Milwaukee, from which it appears that four-tenths of the receipts of the past four years have been marked "Number 2;" in 1866 but one-tenth was "Number 1," and more than a fourth "Number 3;" and less than one-half in the four years has been accepted as "Number 1." The statement is as follows: The fault is not inherent either in soil or climate. It is fully accounted for by deficient preparation of the seed bed, rank growth of grass or weeds, and neglect of that systematic variety in cropping necessary for the preservation of a proper equilibrium in the elements entering into the production of wheat. Quantity required for consumption.-The consumption of wheat is increasing in this country. Formerly, somewhat less than a barrel of flour yearly per capita would supply the bread consumption. "Rye and Indian" or "brown bread" in the east, and corn bread in the south, were far more generally used than at present, and constituted the real "staff of life." A barrel of flour at Christmas was the entire wheat supply of the year for a large class of southern white families, while of course the negroes had no flour bread, except a casual crumb from the planter's kitchen. Railroads have had a wonderful influence in equalizing consumption. While, in 1860, the west produced nine and three-fourths |