Mr. HOWE. Ipwant to add what little weight there is in my 0.inion to the testimony of the Senfrom ansas and the Senfrom Indiana. Instead of this appropriation which it is intended to strike out being the anteroom to a Bureau on Minin, it strikes me that it is some slight erection that is to be taken down for the purpose of getting a Bureau on Mining. Ita Bureau on Mining is necessary, I have not the slightest objection to its being erected; but my private opinion is Imention it here in the hope that it will not be repeated that this $5,000 in the hands of the present ComrGLO is worth as much to the U.S. as any sum that on will ever appropriate to a Bureau on Mining, and will accomplish as much. I can very well understand how this amount of.money in the hands of an ambitious and cute risin and honest ComrGLO, to be used while he is making his surveys, which surveys always precede the observation of the public, to e used in gathering specimens of the mineral lands and forwarding them here to Washington, can be used to great advantage, and will enable the Commissioner to procure a vast amount of information and enable him really and actually, uninfluenced by any community or any interested parties, to determine very accurately what are mineral and what are agricultural lands. But if you appropriate moneys to enable the ComrGLO to make surveys as you now do; and when he has made the surveys, and the surveyors reports have pointed out the general characteristics of the country, and put the local opnlations on the lookout to get them to an ng the mineral lauds, then call upon your Bureau on Mining to determine what is agricultural and what are mineral lands, I should be very much afraid that the mineral lands would shrink a good deal. I do not know that there is any such danger. At all events I do believe that this amount of money would be expended by the present Commissioner, and I think by any commissioner who is competent to discharge the duties of that office, to the great advantage of the U.S.