600 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



less, in many cases, amply repay the expense of a station. Or, the 

 leading crops of a State might be made the subject of scientific study, 

 either with regard to their value as food for men and animals, or as 

 to their demands on the soil for plant-food. The number of these ex- 

 amples might be increased manifold were it needful. Investigations 

 of this sort would have for their main object the adaptation of gen- 

 eral truths to local conditions. Their benefits would be immediate 

 and evident, and they could not fail, if intelligently conducted, to 

 exert a salutary influence on both the agriculture and menticulture of 

 the region. 



Third, an experiment station may make it its aim to advance agri- 

 cultural science in general, without regard to obtaining immediately 

 useful results. 



This would probably be the most unpopular course it could pursue. 

 The great demand is for something " practical," by which is meant 

 something whose value is at once apparent, and can be measured in 

 dollars and cents. This is true in all departments of mental activity, 

 but in none more emphatically than in the one we are considering, 

 unless, indeed, it be in education, and nowhere does the " practical 

 man " render his impracticality more evident. It is a difficultly learned 

 lesson that knowledge pays. We glibly repeat the maxim that " knowl- 

 edge (i. e., science) is power," but we scarcely half believe it. What 

 we mean is that knowing how to do some particular thing or things 

 gives us power. But knowledge is power, nevertheless, to every man 

 in his own way and along his own lines of work, and no knowledge is 

 valueless to any man. Therefore it ought to be made possible for our 

 experiment stations, and, indeed, made part of their duty, not only to 

 teach their constituents how to use such knowledge of agricultural 

 science as the world now possesses, but also to aid in increasing the 

 common stock of knowledge. They should be originators as well as 

 distributors of science. Can any one doubt, in view of the past his- 

 tory of science, that such a course would be of lasting benefit to agri- 

 culture ? We need not seek for striking illustrations of the practical 

 application of the discoveries of pure science to justify such an opin- 

 ion, though such illustrations lie all about us, as, for example, the 

 electric telegraph, the coal-tar colors, and Pasteur's method of inocu- 

 lation for splenic fever, to mention no more. It is not in brilliant 

 inventions or ingenious processes that the advancement of agricultural 

 science is chiefly to be traced, but in the gradual separation of the 

 false from the true, in a better understanding of the reasons of old 

 methods, and the perception of how they should be modified to meet 

 new conditions. In short, what science does for agriculture is not so 

 much to transform the art or its processes, though it does much in that 

 direction, as it is to educate the artisan. It does, indeed, put many 

 new tools into his hand, but it also teaches him how to use old and 

 new tools to the best advantage. 



