THE COMMISSION OF FINE ARTS,
 Washington, D. C., July 26, 1913.
The PRESIDENT,
 The White House.
 SIR: The act of Congress approved August 24, 1912, entitled "An
act to provide for the opening, maintenance, protection, and opera-
tion of the Panama Canal and the sanitation and government of the
Canal Zone," contains, under section 4, the following provision:
 Before the completion of the canal the Commission of Fine Arts may make
report to the President of their recommendation regarding the artistic charac-
ter of the structures of the canal, such report to be transmitted to Congress.
 In pursuance of the above authority and on the urgent request of
the Isthmian Canal Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts, find-
ing it impossible for all the members to visit the Isthmus without
undue delay, sent there a committee consisting of the chairman, Mr.
Daniel C. French, sculptor, and the vice chairman, Mr. Frederick
Law Olmsted, landscape architect. This committee sailed from
New York for Colon on February 4, 1913, diligently examined the
work and plans of the Isthmian Canal Commission, conferred with
the chairman and with many others engaged upon the work, and
returned to New York on February 27. The report of this committee
was submitted to and discussed by the entire commission and forms
the basis of the following report:
 The canal itself and all the structures connected with it impress
one with a sense of their having been built with a view strictly to
their utility. There is an entire absence of ornament and no evi-
dence that the aesthetic has been considered except in a few cases as
a secondary consideration. Because of this very fact there is little to
find fault with from the artist's point of view. The canal, like the
Pyramids or some imposing object in natural scenery, is impressive
from its scale and simplicity and directness. One feels that anything
done merely for the purpose of beautifying it would not only fail
to accomplish that purpose, but would be an impertinence. In such
a work the most that the artist could hope to do would be to aid in
selecting, as between alternative forms of substantially equal value
from the engineering point of view, those which are likely to prove
most agreeable and appropriate in appearance.

 GENERAL APPEARANCE OF COMPLETED CANAL.

 At the risk of rehearsing general descriptions of the canal with
which Congress is familiar, it seems worth while to call attention to
the chief visual characteristics that will be presented by the com-
pleted work. (See Exhibit No. 1, general map of completed canal,
from report for 1912 of Isthmian Canal Commission.)