AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 265 



scientific investigations in behalf of agriculture, nor was it 

 the. first instance of science taking up her abode on the farm. 

 Scotland had her "Agricultural Chemistry Association," that, 

 established for a period of five years, began its operations in 

 1843, and in 1848 was practically merged in the "Highland 

 and Agricultural Society." 



France had, so far back as 1835, in the neighborhood of 

 Strasburg, an experiment station on the farm of Boussingault, 

 who was Professor of Rural Economy in the Conservatory of 

 Arts, in Paris. Both in the laboratory at Paris, and on his 

 estate of Bechelbronn, Boussingault has for forty years 

 carried on a series of most valuable researches, whether con- 

 sidered from the point of view of practice or of science. 



When, in answer to the menace of Napoleon, the battalions 

 of Germany swarmed over the fields of Alsace, it was well 

 understood by Bismarck and Moltke that Jean Baptiste Bous- 

 singault was not merely a Frenchman, but was also a citizen 

 of the world, a benefactor of every Prussian, Saxon and 

 Bavarian landlord and peasant, and one who held highest 

 rank and had done longest service among the priests- and 

 interpreters of nature. Bechelbronn was to them as holy 

 ground, and was sacredly guarded from all molestation. 



But Ma?ckern was the first station where farmers them- 

 selves brought science to their own farm to aid them in their 

 own farming. The example there given was so brilliant and 

 solid that within two years another Saxon society, in the town 

 of Chemnitz, set up a second station, and of the twenty-two 

 years that have since elapsed, 1867 is the only one which has 

 failed to witness the founding of one or more similar institu- 

 tions in Germany or the neighboring countries. The experi- 

 ment station shortly came to be regarded not as a costly 

 embellishment, or an agricultural luxury, in which universi- 

 ties or wealthy gentlemen might harmlessly indulge, but as a 

 most remunerative and most necessary agency for the use as 

 well as for the education of farmers. 



The rate at which the idea of the agricultural experiment 

 station fructified in continental Europe may be gathered from 



