ailway Mail Service investigated
this case and reported that the messenger had disappeared from his post,
leaving his work to be performed by a substitute. The Postmaster-General
thinks this case is sufficiently suggestive to justify him in
recommending that a more severe punishment should be provided for the
offense of assaulting any person in charge of the mails or of retarding
or otherwise obstructing them by threats of personal injury.

"A very gratifying result is presented in the fact that the
deficiency of this Department during the last fiscal year was reduced
to $4,081,790.18, as against $6,169,938.88 of the preceding year. The
difference can be traced to the large increase in its ordinary receipts
(which greatly exceed the estimates therefor) and a slight decrease in
its expenditures."

The ordinary _receipts_ of the Post-Office Department for the past seven
fiscal years have increased at an average of over 8 per cent per annum,
while the increase of _expenditures_ for the same period has been but
about 5.50 per cent per annum, and the _decrease_ of _deficiency_ in the
revenues has been at the rate of nearly 2 per cent per annum.

The report of the Commissioner of Agriculture accompanying this message
will be found one of great interest, marking, as it does, the great
progress of the last century in the variety of products of the soil;
increased knowledge and skill in the labor of producing, saving, and
manipulating the same to prepare them for the use of man; in the
improvements in machinery to aid the agriculturist in his labors,
and in a knowledge of those scientific subjects necessary to a thorough
system of economy in agricultural production, namely, chemistry,
botany, entomology, etc. A study of this report by those interested in
agriculture and deriving their support from it will find it of value in
pointing out those articles which are raised in greater quantity than
the needs of the world require, and must sell, therefore, for less than
the cost of production, and those which command a profit over cost of
production because there is not an overproduction.

I call special attention to the need of the Department for a new
gallery for the reception of the exhibits returned from the Centennial
Exhibition, including the exhibits donated by very many foreign nations,
and to the recommendations of the Commissioner of Agriculture generally.

The reports of the District Commissioners and the board of healt