298 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



hay would benefit us much. We raise timothy and red clover as 

 they do, but it is a different thing from theirs — as much as the 

 corn is. 



In regard to raising- corn, for instance: You may try experi- 

 ments \vith>corn in Maine, and we try the same experiments in 

 Missouri. The experiments are made with different varieties 

 of corn, and we scarcely compare them. They may raise less 

 pounds, and yet more nourishment than we would. One kind of 

 corn needs a little different nourishment from another. 



I do not see how we are going to establish a series of experi- 

 ments throughout the country on any point which has been spoken 

 of, so as to make the comparison as valuable as it would be if they 

 established, as I said before, a series of experiments with a few 

 colleges whose conditions are about the same.* Another thing: if 

 you are going to conduct a few experiments by all the colleges, 

 you and I will be dead before we know much about the results. 

 People are in a hurry iu these days ; and if we can do a little to 

 aid those around us that will be the better way. I think the law 

 contemplates experiments. I know that in our reports we are 

 required to give the results of experiments. 



Prof. Daniels. I concur in the remarks Ynade, as to the diffi- 

 culty of experiments, and I believe it is true, as has been said, 

 that nearly all the experiments that have been made are useless as 

 such — that is, useless as giving any general law, or any data from 

 which we can draw conclusions. But they h v 1. en of use in 

 this: that the}' have taught us where we must begin. . There is 

 another thing that I think is true — that the very men from whom 

 we must look for opposition, and who will be continually against 

 us, are precisely those men for whom we are laboring. They are 

 lookingfor immediate results. They expect, as I heard a farmer 

 say, the kind of education from the agricultural colleges which 

 wiil enable a mail to take up a handful of soil and feel of it, and 

 tell you all it is composed of. That is the kind of knowledge they 

 are looking for, and those are the men from whom we get opposi- 

 tion — the men for whom we are laboring. I do nol believe that 

 any man who has not been personally connected with careful and 

 accurate experiments has anything like an adequate idea of the 

 difficulty there is in connection with carrying on the experiments. 

 It grows upon me every f^ear as I am connected with it. I have 

 lost faith in the results I have obtained every year, because I see 

 how slight variations affect the experiment. So I have not a 



