basis as other national cemeteries; authority to purchase sites for military posts in Texas; the appointment of commissary sergeants from noncommissioned officers, as a measure for securing the better care and protection of supplies; an appropriation for the publication of the catalogue and tables of the anatomical section of the Army Medical Museum; a reappropriation of the amount for the manufacture of breech-loading arms, should the selection be so delayed by the board of officers as to leave the former appropriation unexpended at the close of the fiscal year; the sale of such arsenals east of the Mississippi as can be spared, and the proceeds applied to the establishment of one large arsenal of construction and repair upon the Atlantic Coast and the purchase of a suitable site for a proving and experimental ground for heavy ordnance; the abrogation of laws which deprive inventors in the United States service from deriving any benefit from their inventions; the repeal of the law prohibiting promotions in the staff corps; a continuance of the work upon coast defenses; the repeal of the seventh section of the act of July 13, 1866, taking from engineer soldiers the per diem granted to other troops; a limitation of time for presentation of old War claims for subsistence supplies under act of July 4, 1864; and a modification in the mode of the selection of cadets for the Military Academy, in order to enhance the usefulness of the Academy, which is impaired by reason of the large amount of time necessarily expended in giving new cadets a thorough knowledge of the more elementary branches of learning, which they should acquire before entering the Academy.  Also an appropriation for philosophical apparatus and an increase in the numbers and pay of the Military Academy band.

The attention of Congress will be called during its present session to various enterprises for the more certain and cheaper transportation of the constantly increasing surplus of Western and Southern products to the Atlantic Seaboard.  The subject is one that will force itself upon the legislative branch of the Government sooner or later, and I suggest, therefore, that immediate steps be taken to gain all available information to insure equable and just legislation.

One route to connect the Mississippi Valley with the Atlantic, at Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., by water, by the way of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, and canals and slack-water navigation to the Savannah and Ocmulgee rivers, has been surveyed, and report made by an accomplished engineer officer of the Army.  Second and third new routes will be proposed for the consideration of Congress, namely, by an extension of the Kanawha and James River Canal to the Ohio, and by extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

I am not prepared to recommend Government aid to these or other enterprises until it is clearly shown that they are not only of national interest, but that when completed they will be of a value commensurate with their cost.