matter of careful, conscientious thought and consideration between these different interests, and has been approved in almost every section that has been proposed.

Just a word as to the suggestion as to color. It would be my own suggestion, gentlemen, and the others would agree with me, that in line 9 on page 2, section 3, where it reads "apples of one variety, which are well-grown specimens, hand-picked, of good color for the variety," there should be inserted the words "for the locality in which grown.' There is no question that certain localities do grow deeper color than others. There is no question but what the good Lord has given an air and sunshine to our Northwestern States that does in some varieties of apples produce an effect that is not produced elsewhere, just as he has given to Colorado a sunshine and air, or some climatic conditions, which produce effects that the northwest man can not approach in some varieties of apples. Just so, in the Northwest States, they can not approach in condition and quality some other apples. I believe that that principle should be inserted. With that thought, and with the most earnest thanks of the proponents of this bill for the more than generous allowance of time which you have given us, I wish to close. I thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee is under great obligations to all the gentlemen who have appeared before us, for the information that they have given the committee, and we will bring the hearings to a close. (At 1.15 o'clock p. m. the committee adjourned.)

IMPORTATION OF WILD AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

Washington, D. C., Thursday, March 24, 1910. The committee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. Charles F. Scott in the chair.

The committee thereupon proceeded to the consideration of the bill (H. R. 23261) to import wild and domestic animals into the United States.

[II. R. 23261, Sixty-first Congress, Second Session.]

A BILL To import wild and domestic animals into the United States.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of Agriculture be, and he is hereby, directed to investigate and import into the United States wild and domestic animals whose habitat is similar to government reservations and lands at present unoccupied and unused: Provided, That, in his judgment, said animals will thrive and propagate and prove useful either as food or as beasts of burden; and that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or as much thereof as may be necessary, is hereby appropriated, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, for this purpose.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee has met this morning, pursuant to the request of Representative Broussard, of Louisiana, to consider H. R. 23261 (of which he is the author), a bill to import wild and domestic animals into the United States. The committee will be very glad to hear any statement Mr. Broussard has to make, and will ask him to introduce any other gentlemen whom he would like to have address the committee.

Mr. BROUSSARD. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I shall not make any statement with regard to the bill this morning, because I can come here at any time and appear before the committee. I was anxious to get a meeting as soon as possible because of the fact that three gentlemen who probably have devoted more time than almost anyone else to this matter, both from the scientific and from the practical standpoint of investigating the matter, happen to be in Washington to-day. I refer to Mr. Irwin, of the Bureau of Plant Industry of the Agricultural Department; Captain Duquesne, an Africander who has taken part in various campaigns and is a hunter of great note; and Major Burnham, who has kindly come from New York this morning to appear before the committee, and who has given a great deal of thought and study to this subject. All three of those gentlemen are here, and I want them to be heard, so as to properly present to the committee the importance of this subject.

With the permission of the committee, I will ask Doctor Irwin to address the committee.

STATEMENT OF MR. W. N. IRWIN, OF THE BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

Mr. IRWIN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in studying the resources of our country for a good many years I was led to the conclusion that we ought to have more creatures than we are raising here. It seems rather strange that for four hundred years we have continued to use three animals for our meat supply-cattle, sheep, and swine. Why that has been I am unable to say; but we continued that down to 1900, when one more the goat-was added to our list. These four were imported from Europe, only one native American, the turkey, being under domestication. We have resources. through the South and through the West and on the high mountain ranges where we can add a great many more species that will be of immense benefit in the way of strengthening our meat supply.

We all realize that the meat question is one of the important questions to-day before our country. The prices are going beyond the reach of ordinary people. We can help in that direction if we will get at the matter and bring in the useful animals that we can feed without taking away from the animals we already have.

My idea is that in the South we have the greatest undeveloped resources in the water courses there and in the lakes and ponds there, where I think it is easily possible to add 1,000,000 tons of meat a year to our supply if we will get the right animals. The feed is there now, going to waste. It is alarming the people in that country. It is giving them great inconvenience through stopping up their waterways, their navigable streams, and I believe there is a gold mine there if we will adopt the right measures to utilize the value of it. That is why I have prepared this little paper on this subject, suggesting that we get the hippopotamus here an animal whose flesh is excellent in quality and that is easily kept in suitable locations; an animal that would turn the plague that they now have in the South into good, wholesome flesh for our people.

Then there are many other animals. There is the Cape buffalo, and there are a number of the smaller antelopes that could be added there, that will work right with the others, and can be fenced right with them; and we could soon build up a valuable addition to our animal list in this country. There is not any reason why we can not find a place in the United States for every one of the more than 100 species of animals that are in existence to-day and not domesticated Many of them would prove very valuable additions to our list.

I have suggested quite a few of the smaller antelopes as an adjunct to the farmers' poultry yard-little bits of fellows that weigh from 5 or 6 to 20 or 30 pounds. The farmer could kill one of those and he could use up the meat before it would spoil. He can not do that with any of our domestic animals during the warm weather. He could do that with these antelopes if he had a herd of them.

The CHAIRMAN. Can those little antelopes be domesticated? Mr. IRWIN. They become very tame; they are easily tamed. There is no trouble whatever, I am told, in taming any of them, if you catch the fawns. As in the case of our native deer and elk, if you catch the fawns and pat them a few minutes, they will follow you anywhere. They become great pets. In fact, like most domestic animals, they

get too tame. The bucks become dangerous, as do our bulls and some of our other animals.

I do not think there is any question about the certainty of our domesticating any of these great animals. Probably the rhinoceros would be the most difficult of all. But we have plenty of open, wild desert country where he would live for months without a drop of water; and that is something that nothing we have here can do. We ought to have the camel down on our southwest desert country. It is a good meat animal; it is a good draft animal; it is a good saddle animal; its flesh is good, and it is a good dairy animal. There is not any reason why we should not have them.

When Mr. Davis introduced the herd of camels here in 1853 or 1854, the only mistake about it was that he did not have enough of them to make the test a certain one. The boys that were assigned to use camels were in the minority, and the boys on the horses made sport of them to such an extent that the whole thing was thrown overboard. They would not use them. They practically rebelled against it. But that would have been a great animal for this country. Those animals traveled all over the southwest deserts and lived, while the horses that they started out with perished.

Those are lessons that I think we ought to look at rather seriously, because our country is growing so fast that we ought to adopt every possible means of strengthening our meat supply. There is not any reason why we can not raise meat for every person, if we will get at it and get the right animals here. We have animals in South America, like the llama, that would live all the way up to the tops of our mountains. The yak from Thibet would live on the highest Rockies and succeed well. In his native country he is domesticated. They use him for a saddle animal, for draft purposes, for milk, and for his flesh; and his hair is of no inconsiderable value.

There is a variety of breed of pigs over in northern Manchuria that would be of great value to all the northern section of our country. They are valuable for their meat and for other purposes as well. They make a good yield of meat on rather coarse kinds of feed-millet, distillery refuse, etc., and such feed as that-and attain a weight of 400 pounds. The yield of the bristles from those hogs is of very great commercial value over in that country. A few years ago, according to the last figures I have, there were 75 tons of bristles sold in Newchwang at from 12 to 18 cents a pound, I believe; and the statement from the consular agent for Great Britain was that that was a small proportion of what had been sold out to Tientsin, I believe it is called-another port where those bristles are shipped.

If these great porkers will make so much pork on such unpromising feed in that far northern country, it seems to me that all through our Northern States they would be a much more valuable animal than our European pigs. We could get them here at slight cost and could have them at our experiment stations in Minnesota, in the Dakotas, in Montana, New York, and the New England States; and they ought to prove of very great value to this country.

Mr. BROUSSARD. Doctor, do you want to pass these papers around? Mr. IRWIN. Yes; I have a little paper here that I would be glad for each member of the committee to have.

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The CHAIRMAN. If you have finished your statement, Doctor, I should like to ask you one or two questions.

Mr. IRWIN. Certainly.

The CHAIRMAN. First, in regard to the hippopotami: Are they easily domesticated?

Mr. IRWIN. The people who have handled them tell me they are very easily tamed, and become very much attached to man.

The CHAIRMAN. In case they were introduced into the Southern States, would there be no danger that they would turn wild and that they would become a pest?

Mr. IRWIN. I think perhaps if they were loose there they would. They would annoy the people who have crops, because they will go as far as 15 miles in one night, and destroy gardens and things of that kind. It is not my idea at all to turn them loose. That animal is easily controlled. It would be my idea to domesticate them. There would be no trouble in fencing them and controlling them. The CHAIRMAN. Are they prolific breeders?

Mr. IRWIN. They breed once a year, according to the best records that I can get hold of. The only record that we have in this country is in regard to the cow in the Zoological Garden in New York, which produced eight calves in nine years, I believe, and raised seven of the eight.

The CHAIRMAN. What does the flesh most nearly resemble?

Mr. IRWIN. It is a kind of combination of pork and beef in taste. The CHAIRMAN. Do white men like it?

Mr. IRWIN. Many of them do. Many writers say that it is not edible at all, for this reason: When those big animals are killed in the water, their specific gravity is so great that they immediately. sink to the bottom, and lie there until putrefaction sets in and the gases cause them to rise. Naturally, our people here would not like that kind of meat. We would not like it in the case of beef, either. But where they are killed on land and dressed at once, those who have tasted them say that the flesh is delicious; it is excellent. I have letters right here explaining the matter that I would be glad to have read, if you would like to have that done-letters from gentlemen who have been over to Portuguese East Africa, directing the agricultural problems there, and so on.

Mr. CHAPMAN. The hippopotami grow to a great size, do they not? They become very large?

Mr. IRWIN. The largest estimate I have had was four and a half tons. They gain about 100 pounds per month, according to the estimate of the people in New York. When about 3 years old they weigh about 3,600 pounds.

Mr. HOWELL. What do they subsist upon?

Mr. IRWIN. I am told that they will eat anything that cattle will eat, and many things that the cattle can not get to-the water plants. They will eat all kinds of water plants that cattle can not get at. That is what first attracted my attention to these animals. I thought they would be very useful in the Florida and Louisiana streams, to clear them out.

The CHAIRMAN. How would you expect to control them in those streams?

Mr. IRWIN. I would fence off a margin along the stream, and pull the hyacinth in for them to eat.