The war now in progress between China and Japan has rendered it necessary or expedient to dispatch eight vessels to those waters.

Both the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of the Treasury recommend the transfer of the work of the Coast Survey proper to the Navy Department.  I heartily concur in this recommendation.  Excluding Alaska and a very small area besides, all the work of mapping and charting our coasts has been completed.  The hydrographic work, which must be done over and over again by reason of the shifting and varying depths of water consequent upon the action of streams and tides, has heretofore been done under the direction of naval officers in subordination to the Superintendent of the Coast Survey.  There seems to be no good reason why the Navy should not have entire charge hereafter of such work, especially as the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department is now and has been for many years engaged in making efficient maps entirely similar to those prepared by the Coast Survey.

I feel it my imperative duty to call attention to the recommendation of the Secretary in regard to the personnel of the line of the Navy.  The stagnation of promotion in this the vital branch of the service is so great as to seriously impair its efficiency.

I consider it of the utmost importance that the young and middle-aged officers should before the eve of retirement be permitted to reach a grade entitling them to active and important duty.

The system adopted a few years ago regulating the employment of labor at the navy-yards is rigidly upheld and has fully demonstrated its usefulness and expediency.  It is within the domain of civil-service reform inasmuch as workmen are employed through a board of labor selected at each navy-yard and are given work without reference to politics and in the order of their application, preference, however, being given to Army and Navy veterans and those having former navy-yard experience.

Amendments suggested by experience have been made to the rules regulating the system.  Through its operation the work at our navy-yards has been vastly improved in efficiency and the opportunity to work has been honestly and fairly awarded to willing and competent applicants.

It is hoped that if this system continues to be strictly adhered to there will soon be as a natural consequence such an equalization of party benefit as will remove all temptation to relax or abandon it.

The report of the Secretary of the Interior exhibits the situation of the numerous and interesting branches of the public service connected with his Department.  I commend this report and the valuable recommendations of the Secretary to the careful attention of the Congress.

The public land disposed of during the year amounted to 10,406,100.77 acres, including 28,876.05 of Indian lands.

It is estimated that the public domain still remaining amounts to a little more than 600,000,000 acres, including, however, about 360,000,000 acres in Alaska, as well as military reservations and railroad and other selections of lands yet unadjudicated.