The work on the cemetery in the vicinity of Old Soldiers" Home has been completed the ground refenced a neat and handsome lodge erected, a garden laid out, the graves sodded, the walks graveled, and choice flowers and trees planted.

Great care and attention have also been paid to the Harmony Burial Ground, where all soldiers dying of infectious diseases, and contrabands, are interred.

The improvement of the National Cemeteries has been a source of great gratification to all who visit them and entirely dissipates the prevailing opinion of those living remote from Washington that soldiers were irreverently or carelessly buried.

At Arlington Cemetery anew road has been made by leveling, in part, the hill on the south side of the mansion, by bridging small stream and by grading and ditching from the mansion, where it commences, to new lodge on the Alexandria road, where it ends. A large number of well-selected shade trees and choice flowers have been planted, the gardens on both sides of the mansion improved and refenced, and the graves sodded; indeed, the place so transformed as hardly to be recognized by persons who had previously visited it.

* * * *

Number of deaths reported from August 1, 1864, to June 30, 1865.

[JULY 1, 1865.-Report of Captain James M. Moore of burials on the battle-fields of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania (here omitted) is embodied in the extract from his annual report, p. 318.]

Graves of Union prisoners at Andersonville.-Report of Captain Moore.

WASHINGTON, Wednesday, October 18, 1865.

The following report of Captain J. M. Moore, assistant quartermaster, who was sent to Andersonville, Ga., to mark the graves of Union prisoners for future identification, contains valuable information, in which the people are interested, and will doubtless, be appreciated by the relatives and friends of those who have given their lives to their country:

ASST. QUARTERMASTER'S OFFICE, DEPT. OF WASHINGTON,

Washington, D. C., September 20, 1865.

Bvt. Major General M. C. MEIGS,

Quartermaster-General U. S. Army, Washington, D. C.:

GENERAL: In accordance with Special Orders, Numbers 19, Quartermaster-General's Office, dated june 30, 1865, directing me to proceed to Andersonville, Ga., for the purpose of marking the graves of Union soldiers for future identification and inclosing the cemetery, I have the honor to report as follows:

I left Washington on the 8th of July last with mechanics and materials four the purpose above mentioned.

On my arrival at Savannah I ascertained that there were was no railroad communication whatever to Andersonville, the direct road to Macon being broken and that from Augusta via Atlanta also in the same

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*For statement (here omitted) see pp. 259-262, of Executive Document Numbers 1, to which reference is made in foot-mote (*) p. 249.

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