36 MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



lor raspberry, which cannot be grown to advantage in Washtenaw county 

 on account of the drouth, is a desirable sort along the lake shore. The 

 Gregg raspberry, which is almost the only market sort in the above 

 county, gives place in a measure to more productive but less vigorous 

 varieties in other parts of the state. Cauliflowers, which on suitable soil 

 may be grown on upland in western and northern Michigan, are a reliable 

 crop only on reclaimed swamps in the central and southern parts of the 

 state. Much remains to adopt the various horticultural crops to the local 

 conditions found in the state, and fruit and vegetable growers are fully 

 aware of the necessity of understanding the influence of their local condi 

 tions. But while these minor adjustments are still going on and are far 

 from complete, the broader lines are better understood; the hills are 

 being devoted to fruit, the reclaimed swamps to vegetables, and the fertile 

 plains are left for the purposes of general agriculture. 



FUTILE EXPERIMENTS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF AGRICUL- 

 TURE. 



BY MANLY MILES, M. D. 



(Read before the Academy, December 27, 1S94.) 



[Abstract.] 



In the popular demand for experiments to develop and establish cor- 

 rect principles in farm practice, the limits of experimental methods in 

 the advancement of science, and especially in the application of science 

 in agriculture, are entirely overlooked. 



The established principles of science may be successfully applied to 

 explain the results of farm practice, while many of the problems pre- 

 sented cannot be solved by direct experiment. 



In pointing out the futility of empirical experiments for the discovery 

 of the underlying principles of farm practice we do not belittle or under- 

 value the advantages of the legitimate applications of science to agricul- 

 ture. The farmer is constantly dealing with the forces of nature, and 

 a knowledge of the laws that determine and give direction to their vari- 

 ous manifestations cannot fail to be of practical value in his every day 

 work. 



Investigations in pure science must then be looked upon as the most 

 direct and efficient means of progress in the improvement of agriculture, 

 and the short cuts or royal roads to exact knowledge that are marked 

 out ostensibly for the farmer's benefit must lead him astray out of sight 

 of the landmarks of real progress. 



The same lines and methods of research cannot be followed in the 

 different departments of science from the marked difference in the condi- 

 tions and problems presented for investigation. Physics and chemistry 

 are emphatically experimental sciences, as their fundamental principles 

 and progress and development, from the very nature of the phenomena 

 with which they deal, must depend upon exact experiments in research 

 and for the purposes of verification. In astronomy and biology on the 

 other hand there are insuperable difficulties in the application of experi- 



