Art Gallery, on Seventeenth Street, and beyond that is seen the old Octagon House, on a straight line with the Naval Observatory, conspicuous in white paint and yellow domes, three miles away amid the green hills beyond Georgetown. Nearer the water than any of these is a large yellow house among the trees -the Van Ness mansion, one of the first costly residences built in Washington.

Connecticut Avenue is the street leading from the White House straight northwest to the boundary, where it breaks into the fashionable suburban parks on Meridian Hill, at the left of which are the wooded vales of Rock Creek, near which Northwestern the noble Anglican Cathedral is to arise. At the right of the White Outlook. House is the Treasury, here seen to inclose two great courts. The lines of Seventeenth, Sixteenth, Fifteenth streets, and of Vermont Avenue, lead the eye across the most solid and fashionable northwest quarter of the city to the more thinly settled hill-districts, where are conspicuous the square tower of the Soldiers' Home (41⁄2 miles), the lofty buildings of Howard University, and, farther to the right and more distant, the halls of the Catholic University.

Scene
Toward the
Capitol.

The eastern outlook carries the picture around to the right, and embraces the valley of the Anacostia River, or eastern branch of the Potomac. Here the conspicuous object is the Capitol (11⁄2 miles distant), whose true proportions and supreme size can now be well understood. Over its right wing appears the Congressional Library, its gilt dome flashing back the rays of the sun, and setting it out sharply against the Maryland hills. Between the Monument and the Capitol stretches the green Mall, with the grounds and buildings of the Agricultural Department nearest the observer; then the castellated towers of the Smithsonian, the low breadth of the National Museum, the red, shapeless pile of the Army Medical Museum, and the small Fisheries Building, leading the eye as far as Sixth Street, beyond which are open parks. Somewhat to the right, the course of the Pennsylvania Railroad, out Virginia Avenue, is seen as far as Garfield Park, where it disappears within a tunnel. This leads the eye to the broad current of the Anacostia, which can be overlooked as far up as the Navy Yard, and downward past the bridge to Anacostia, to where it joins the Potomac at Greenleaf's Point. The military barracks there can be seen; and this side of it, along the harbor branch of the Potomac, are the steamboat wharves.

Down the
Potomac.

The view southward is straight down the Potomac, far beyond the spires of Alexandria, six miles in an air line, to where it bends out of view around Cedar Point. Long Bridge, which has been built sixty years or more, is in the immediate foreground, and the railways leading to it can be traced. To the right, the eye sweeps over a wide area of the red Virginia hills, thickly crowned during the Civil War with fortifications, the sites of some of which may be discovered by the knowing, and covers the disastrous fields of Manassas off to the right on the level blue horizon.

The western view continues this landscape of Virginia, and includes about three miles of the Potomac above Long Bridge. Close beneath the eye are the old and scat

Up the
Potomac.

tered houses of the southwest quarter, with the Van Ness homestead, and the hill crowned by the old Naval Observatory on ground where Washington meant to place his national university. Above that the current of the river is broken by Analostan, or Mason's Island, opposite the mouth of Rock Creek, beyond which are the crowded, hilly streets of Georgetown, and the Aqueduct bridge, leading to Roslyn, on the southern bank. Then come the high banks which confine and hide the river, and bear upon their crest the flashing basin of the distributing reservoir. Beyond it, over the city of Georgetown, are the beautiful wooded heights about Woodley, where President Cleveland had his summer home, and

thousands of charming suburban houses are building. On the Virginia side of the river, the Arlington mansion appears, somewhat at the left, and three miles distant; more in front, and nearer, the National Cemetery embowered in trees; and behind it, the clustered quarters of Fort Meyer. The distance is a rolling, semi-wooded country, thickly sown with farms, hamlets, and villages, among which Fall's Church is alone conspicuous, and fading away to a high level horizon; but when the air is clear, the eye can see and rejoice in the faint but distinct outlines of the turquoise-tinted Blue Ridge, far away in the southwest.

Some Scientific Departments.

The public institutions along the south side of The Mall, dealing in a large part of the scientific work of the nation, contain more to interest the stranger in Washington than any other, except the Capitol itself. They include the Washington Monument, and there are good reasons for advising that the ascent of this should be the very first thing done by the visitor; the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Department of Agriculture, the National and Army Medical museums in the Smithsonian grounds, and the Fisheries Commission. It is a long day's task to make a satisfactory tour of these buildings; and the National Museum alone has material for almost unlimited study in many paths of knowledge. Let us begin with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the name given to the Government's factory for designing, engraving, and printing its bonds, certificates, checks, notes, revenue and postage stamps, and many other official papers. It is under control of the Treasury Department, and occupies a handsome brick building on Fourteenth and Printing. Street, S. W., within five minutes' walk of the Washington Monument.

Bureau of
Engraving

It is three stories high, 220 feet long by 135 feet wide, and was built in 1878 at a cost of $300,000. Visitors are received from 10 to 2 o'clock, and wait in the receptionroom until an attendant (several women are assigned to this duty) is ready to conduct a

party over the building, which is simply a crowded factory of high-class technical work, the products of which have received the highest encomiums at several world's fairs in Europe as well as in America.

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Just east of this bureau, occupying large grounds between Fourteenth and Twelfth streets, S. W., and reached from Pennsylvania Avenue by street cars on both those streets, and from the Capitol by the Belt Line along Maryland Avenue and B Street, S. W., is the headquarters of the Department of Agriculture. This popular Department grew out of the special interest which early patent commissioners took in agricultural machinery, improvements, and the collection and distribution of seeds function that formed a large part of its work until 1895. It was gradually separated from the Patent Office work, erected into a commissionership, and finally Department (1889) was given the rank of an executive department, the Secretary of of Agriculture being the last-added Cabinet officer. His office is in the brick Agriculture. building west of the Smithsonian grounds, and he has the help of an assistant secretary, to whom has been assigned the direction of the great amount of scientific work done, including the experiment stations, and the studies of fibers, irrigation, and the department museum.

The scope of the work is now very extended, including the study of diseases of live stock, and the control of the inspection of import and export animals, cattle transportation, and meat; a bureau of statistics of crops, live stock, etc., at home and abroad; scientific investigations in forestry, botany, fruit culture, cultivation of textile plants, and diseases of trees, grains, vegetables, and plants; studies of the injurious or beneficial relations to agriculture of insects, birds, and wild quadrupeds; investigations as to roads and methods of irrigation; chemical and microscopical laboratories, and a great number of experiment stations, correspondents, and observers in various parts of this and other

countries. The results of all these investigations and experiments are liberally published, and in spite of a sneer now and then the people are satisfied that the $3,300,000 or so expended annually by this department is a wise and profitable outlay.

There is a museum in a separate building in the rear of the main one, exhibiting excellent wax models of fruits, nuts, and natural foods of various kinds; and an especially full and interesting display of models showing the damage wrought by many kinds of insects injurious to trees and plants; also an Agricultural attractive and instructive exhibit, comprising a number of groups of Museum. mounted birds, ground-squirrels, gophers, and other mammals, in natural surroundings, each representing a chapter in the life history of the animal and showing its relation to agriculture. These were exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition, at Chicago, in 1893, and excited admiration. The library and herbarium will interest botanists. The ordinary visitor, however, will prefer to remain out of doors, where years ago care made these grounds the best cultivated part of The Mall, and a practical example of ornamental gardening. The extensive greenhouses must also be visited; all are open at all reasonable hours, and the palmhouse is a particularly delightful place in a stormy winter's day. A tower in the garden, composed of slabs with their foot-thick bark from one of the giant trees (sequoia) of California, should not be neglected, for it represents the exact size of the huge tree, "General Noble," from which the pieces

were cut.

Weather
Service.

One important branch of the department — namely, the Weather Bureau - is domiciled at the corner of M and Twenty-fourth streets. There may be seen the delicate instruments by which the changes of meteorological conditions are recorded, and the method of forecasting the weather for the ensuing forty-eight hours, which is based upon reports of local conditions telegraphed each night and morning from the observers in all parts of North America, whereupon orders to display appropriate signals are telegraphed to each office. The system grew up from the experiments of Gen. A. G. Myer, Chief Signal Officer, U. S. A., who invented the present system and conducted it under the authority of Congress (1870) as a part of the signal service of the army. Generals

Hazen and A. W. Greely, of Arctic fame, succeeded him and perfected Forecasting. the service, but in 1891 it was transferred to the Department of Agriculture and placed in charge of a civilian " 'chief" appointed by the President. In addition to the forecasting of storms, etc., the bureau has in hand the gauging and reporting of rivers; the maintenance and operation of seacoast telegraph lines, and the collection and transmission of marine intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation; the reporting of temperature and rainfall conditions for the cotton interests, and a large amount of scientific study in respect to meteorology.

The Smithsonian Institution and National Museum are reached by crossing Twelfth Street, S. W., and entering the spacious park. Near the gate stands a lifelike statue of Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Institution. It is of bronze, after a model by W. W. Story, and was erected by the regents in 1884.

The Smithsonian Institution was constituted by an act of Congress to administer the bequest of his fortune made to the United States by James Smithson, a younger son of the English Duke of Northumberland, and a man of science, who died

in 1829. In 1838 the legacy became available and was brought over in Smithsonian gold sovereigns, which were recoined into American money, yielding Institution. $508,318.46. The language of this bequest was:

I bequeath the whole of my property to the United States of America to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.

The acceptance of this trust is the only action of the kind ever taken by the nation, and the Institution stands in a peculiar relation to the Government. It is composed of the President of the United States and the members of his Cabinet, ex officio, a chancellor, who is elected, and a secretary, who is the active administrator of its affairs. The business of the institution is managed by a board of regents, composed of the Vice-President and the Chief Justice of the United States, three Senators, three members of the House of Representatives, and six other eminent persons nominated by a joint resolution of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The immediate and primary object of the board, as above constituted, is to administer the fund, which has now increased to about $1,000,000, and in doing so it promotes the object of its founder thus:

Plan and
Scope.

(1) In the increase of knowledge by original investigation and study, either in science or literature. (2) In the diffusion of this knowledge by publication everywhere, and especially by promoting an interchange of thought among those prominent in learning among all nations, through its correspondents. These embrace institutions or societies conspicuous in art, science, or literature throughout the world. Its publications are in three principal issues, namely: The "Contributions to Knowledge," the "Miscellaneous Collections," and the "Annual Report." Numerous works are published annually by it, under one of these forms, and distributed to its principal correspondents.

There was early begun a system of international exchanges of correspondence and publications, which forms a sort of clearing-house for the scientific world in its dealings with Americans; and there is no civilized country or people on the globe where the Institution is not represented by its correspondents, who now number about 24,000. The immediate benefit to the Institution itself has been in enabling it to build up a great scientific library of over 300,000 titles and mainly deposited in the Library of Congress. The Smithsonian Building, of Seneca brownstone, was planned by James Renwick, the architect whose best known work, perhaps, is St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.