274 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS. 



The complexity and inherent difficulties of most of the problems 

 with which practical agriculture has to deal have led all thinking 

 farmers to a conviction of the necessity of carefully conducted 

 experiments, and these continued for a sufficient length of time, 

 to ascertain, more fully than are yet known, the causes of varia- 

 tion in results, and to eliminate the. errors which cluster about the 

 interpretation of the results of such experiments as are frequently 

 undertaken by individuals. Thousands of isolated experiments 

 have been tried in the past, aud are every year being conducted 

 by persons who feel desirous to question nature, both for their 

 own benefit, and with the hope that they may thus add something 

 to the common stock of knowledge. And yet how very few 

 doubtful points in farm practice have been thus satisfactorily 

 settled ! 



In nineteen-twentieths of the experiments which are annually 

 made and reported through the agricultural press, too much is 

 attempted in each ; many of the conditions affecting results are not 

 apprehended, and, consequently, it is impossible to interpret the 

 results correctly ; yet a confident interpretation of some sort is 

 usually attached to each. From imperfect data thus obtained, 

 from half ascertained facts, which upon fuller examination are 

 found to be no facts at all, but only guesses, attempts are constantly 

 made to generalize, and to deduce laws to govern practice. Is it 

 any wonder that such "book farming" should fall into disrepute 

 and bring discredit upon worthy scientific labor ? 



The truth is, that not one person in a thousand has any adequate 

 idea of the length of time and amount of labor and expense which 

 must necessarily be involved in such experiments and series of 

 experiments as shall yield positive, decisive and trustworthy rules 

 of practice. Attention is very generally directed to the Agricultu- 

 ral Colleges as the places where these are to be made, and high 

 expectations are indulged by many in regard to what they may 

 accomplish in this direction. And, if the necessary means were 

 at their command, much might be done, although not without 

 many years of patient labor, however ample their facilities might 

 be. 



