AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 601 



Our State and national governments have recognized the impor- 

 tance of agricultural education by founding the agricultural colleges, 

 and in so doing they have done well ; but, unless we are prepared to 

 maintain that we know already all that we can or all that we need of 

 the science of agriculture, the system needs, to complete it, such pro- 

 vision for increasing our knowledge in this direction as well-equipped 

 experiment stations can furnish. Despite the great advances of agri- 

 cultural science in the last thirty years, there is still a vast region to 

 be explored ; there are many errors to be corrected and partial views 

 to be extended ; and, unless the professors in our agricultural colleges 

 have and impart to their students a sense of the extent of their igno- 

 rance and a thirst for more and fuller knowledge, their instruction will 

 be largely fruitless. We must provide for teaching the teachers. As 

 the colleges are now situated, it is in most cases practically impossible 

 for the professors to undertake any extended experimental work. Agri- 

 cultural experimentation, especially, demands both time and money, 

 and usually no large amount of either is available for it. It is not a 

 work that can be taken up at odd minutes, in the intervals of other 

 occupations, with any hope of success. It must be followed as a busi- 

 ness, and this it can be only in an institution maintained for this pur- 

 pose i. e., in an experiment station. 



It would appear, then, that agricultural experiment stations are 

 important agents in promoting the welfare of the agricultural classes, 

 and through them that of the whole community. They may do this 

 by repressing fraud or adulteration, and thus preventing pecuniary 

 loss ; or, by developing practical applications of scientific principles, 

 and thus leading to pecuniary gain ; or, last, but by no means least, 

 by promoting the advancement of agricultural science and of sound 

 agricultural education, and so contributing both to the physical and 

 mental well-being of important classes in the community. 



We emphasize this latter function of experiment stations, not with 

 a desire to depreciate their other uses, which are highly important, but 

 which are also sure of general appreciation, but because it is the one 

 most likely to be overlooked, and because it seems to us the most im- 

 portant of all. Our experiment stations will doubtless continue to 

 test fertilizers, seeds, etc., as they have done, and they will, in all 

 likelihood, extend the scope and number of their field and feeding 

 experiments. How far they will enter upon purely scientific work it 

 is not so easy to foretell. Many, doubtless, will take it up to a small 

 extent, if at all, finding their time and means fully occupied with 

 other things. It must also depend largely on the public sentiment, 

 particularly in the case of stations supported by the State, and it is 

 perhaps questionable whether much but " practical " work can be ex- 

 pected from them. Private stations, of course, would be free from 

 any limitations arising from lack of public appreciation, and, provided 

 their means were adequate, might very appropriately devote them- 



