AGRICULTURE AND RURAL ECONOMY. 351 



plants, under experiment. Most of the larger and more suc- 

 cessful ones are connected with universities or agricultural 

 schools, whose advantages are found of much more practical 

 utility than those of isolated farms. 



The working force of each station consists of a director, 

 who is very often professor in a university or school, and 

 usually one to three or four skilled chemists as assistants, 

 besides sometimes a farm superintendent and servants. 



The support of the stations comes from government appro- 

 priations, from contributions from agricultural societies, cor- 

 porations, schools, and individuals, and from analyses of fer- 

 tilizers, feeding-materials, etc. The revenues of the German 

 stations average some $2375 per annum, of which about 52 

 per cent, comes from governments, 17 percent, from agricult- 

 ural societies, corporations, and private individuals, and the 

 rest from analyses. The largest government appropriation 

 to any one station is $3750. The largest total revenue is 

 $7900 ; the smallest, $600. 



A report prepared for the anniversary at Moeckern, above 

 mentioned, and giving statistics of the stations during the 

 first twenty -five years of their existence, forms an octavo 

 volume of 449 pages. A bare outline of the organization, 

 equipment, and kind of work of each station occupies 140 

 pages. No less than 152 pages are filled with the mere titles 

 of their investigations. 



In short, there are to-day in Europe over 170 institutions, 

 in which not less than 250 chemists and physiologists are de- 

 voting their labor to scientific researches for the benefit of 

 farming. Such is the picture of the j>resent status of agri- 

 cultural investigation in Europe. 



Experiment stations in the United States are still in their 

 infancy, but promise a brilliant future. Only two have as 

 yet been successfully inaugurated one in Connecticut and 

 one in North Carolina. Efforts are in progress, however, 

 to secure the establishment of stations in a number of other 

 states. Several of our leading universities, agricultural 

 schools, and bureaus and boards of agriculture have been 

 doing excellent work in this direction, notably the Bussey 

 Institution of Harvard University, the Georgia Bureau of 

 Agriculture, and various others. 



