1^)4 llErOIlT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



Elomentarv and socondnrv courses in agriculture and mechanic arts 

 in the })ublic schools are required to direct students to the land-p-ant 

 colleges and to prepare them to enter their courses. 



Prof. Joini Hamilton discussed the relation of the land-grant col- 

 leges to the farmers, and pointed out three great fields in which these 

 institutions should work, viz, (1) tlie college class room — four-year 

 courses, short courses, and post-graduate courses; (2) college exten- 

 sion Avork, including correspondence courses, farmers' institutes, mov- 

 able schools of agriculture, and practice farms, and (3) normal 

 schools of agriculture for training capable farmers to take part in the 

 extension work of the colleges. 



SECTIOX ON EXPERIiMENT STATION WORK. 



The two subjects arranged by the programme committee for con- 

 sideration in this section were (1) soil investigations and (2) how 

 much demonstration work and what kind should the experiment sta- 

 tion undertake? 



Under the first subject Dr. C. G. Hoj^kins presented a paper on Soil 

 Fertility in Relation to Permanent Agriculture, in wdiich he called 

 attention to the widespread decline of the fertility of farm lands in 

 the United States, due to exhaustive systems of cropping and export 

 of fertility from the farm. The extension of animal husbandry, 

 involving the feeding of a large proportion of the crops grown to 

 animals on the farm, and thus insuring the return of the fertility to 

 the soil, would act as a partial check to this exhaustion ; but it was 

 pointed out that about 80 per cent of the farmers of the United States 

 are giving attention almost exclusively to crop production, and that 

 a large j)roportion of them will probably never take up animal pro- 

 duction to an extent that will result in an increase of fertility of their 

 farms in this way. It is therefore necessary for such farmers to 

 adopt systems of cropj^ing, supplemented by the use of fertilizers, 

 which will enable them to maintain the balance of fertility or turn it 

 in their favor. 



The experiments of the Illinois Station on representative Illinois 

 soil type usually agreed in showing that in these soils phosphoric acid 

 is the principal requirement, and the only one which needs to be 

 applied in commercial form. The cheapest and most efficient means 

 of supplying the phosphoric acid has been found to be by the use of 

 fine-ground rock phosphate in connection with green manures or other 

 materials supplying abundance of decaying organic matter. 



In the discussion following this paper. Director C. E. Thorne 

 pointed out the fact that virgin soils and those long under cultivation 

 behave very difFerentlv toward the same systems of cropping and 

 manuring; Dr. H. J. Wheeler called attention to the unsuitability 

 of untreated phosphates to exhausted soils and to market-garden 

 crops; and Prof. W. P. Brooks stated that a large proportion of the 



