in plants and fruits reported by the government, a few selected specimens may be quoted as follows:

"Native Dakota plums and sand cherries have been hybridized with other stone fruits from Europe and Asia to combine the hardiness of the native fruits with the size and quality, to some extent at least, of the choice cultivated fruits from abroad. In New Jersey practically all of the important vegetables have been subjected to hybridizing and breeding, and many new varieties with desirable qualities have been produced and disseminated.

"Good varieties of wheat have been originated by breeding. The Minnesota station originated numerous varieties, two of which have spread over half a million acres, and yield from one to three bushels more per acre than the varieties formerly grown. The winter-wheat belt has been extended farther and farther north by sowing adapted varieties until this wheat is now grown in regions which had before been regarded as incapable of growing it. Winter character has been added to the spring wheats of the Pacific Coast and new hybrids of these wheats are now grown there."

This same law of selection has played a large part in the successful introduction into Alaska of many cold-resisting fruits, grains, and vegetables. Indeed, by this method of fitting the plants to the soil and climate, vast acreages have everywhere been added to the agricultural areas of the nation.

If, by careful scientific breeding, fifteen per cent and more of increase could be added each year to the four billion dollars worth of farm crops, and a similar amount to the three billion dollars worth of farm animals, that would mean additional profits of one billion dollars annually, and the farmers thus be made rich at cost of a very small initial outlay.

Working through the state stations and agricultural colleges, the Department has begun to create new strains of farm animals, as, for instance, "carriage horses in Colorado; cattle for beef production under southern conditions in Alabama; a cross between the horse and the zebra in Maryland; the reestablishment of the Morgan breed of horses in Vermont; sheep especially suited to range conditions in Wyoming; a breed of milking Shorthorn cattle in Minnesota; draft horses in Iowa; improved Holstein cattle in North

Dakota; and a breed of hens for high egg production in Maine."

To one imbued with the older ideas of the functions of government, it would seem passing strange that this nation should undertake the business of horse-breeding, but it is a fact that the government is raising horses on breeding farms in Colorado and Vermont, in order to check the evident deterioration, and establish types that would be most serviceable and restore the former sturdy qualities of the American horse. When all the people work together for the good of all, nothing is too small or insignificant, if in doing it better conditions of living are brought about.

In addition to improving the strain of farm animals, the Bureau of Animal Industry has done much to stamp out the diseases of animals, epidemic and otherwise, thus protecting both man and beast. (This might well be called an animal bureau of prophylaxis. ) Secretary Wilson declares that important discoveries worth many millions of dollars to the farmers of the country have been made touching the causes and cures of animal diseases. The cause of hog cholera, for example, has

been discovered, a cholera serum prepared, and its use has demonstrated that it is a practical, trustworthy, and cheap preventive of this disease. By its use, millions of dollars have been saved annually.

The great need of freeing herds of cattle from tuberculosis led the government to undertake the free distribution of tuberculin for testing bovine tuberculosis. During last year, 213,000 doses of tuberculin and 52,000 of mullein were sent out to the health officers for use in testing dairy cattle and horses. All imported cattle are carefully inspected. A vaccine for the prevention of blackleg in cattle is manufactured and distributed free to the cattle raisers of the United States, 1,154,100 doses being sent out during 1908. Sheep scab in the ranges of the west has been nearly eradicated by the government in cooperation with the states.

The injection of sterilized atmospheric air into the udder of dairy cows affected with milk fever, invariably results in cure, and thus prevents the enormous loss which has resulted from this disease. Since the discovery that the cattle tick was the cause of Texas fever, large regions have been freed from this insect

and the cattle fever prevented. Millions of dollars have also been saved by the energetic work of the government in stamping out the foot and mouth disease in cattle.

Most careful meat inspection has been undertaken in all abattoirs making interstate shipments; and so extensive is the annual inspection of animals that if placed in single file they would form a line reaching four times around the world.

The claim of the Department that insect pests annually consume and destroy in the United States values beyond estimate is readily accepted when it is known that the "vegetable bugs" alone lay upon the farmer an annual tax greater than that involved in the maintenance of the entire United States government. By waging a relentless and increasing war against such pests, the Bureau of Entomology saves the farmer in some single years from $300,000,000 to $400,000,000.

The loss by injurious mammals annually is in excess of $100,000,000, while the insects of all kinds make a tax of about one billion dollars. The incidental losses greatly increase this amount; as for instance, in the case of the