AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS. 291 



When the animal gets contented in the pen in which he is placed, 

 with none to molest, he eats his food quietly and lies down. 

 Where there are two or three together, perhaps one is quarrelsome, 

 and is continually disturbing the others by not allowing them to 

 eat or to lie down. It is with animals as it is with persons. One 

 is restless, and another is quiet. When you have a large number 

 of persons together, you find it exceedingly difficult to keep the 

 roortl still. It is so with animals. One animal gets nervous and 

 keeps the others confused and unsettled. 



Prof. Hamilton. I took it for granted, when I made the state- 

 ment in regard to putting a number of pigs in the same pen, that 

 the same care would be exercised as when there was but one 

 animal in the pen. 



Prof. . Prentiss. I' have had enough experience, and seen 

 enough, to convince me that the difficulty in the way of conduct- 

 ing experiments is even greater than has been set forth by the 

 remarks this afternoon. The materials and the forces of nature 

 are so varied, and life is everywhere so variable in plants and in 

 animals, that we cannot tell whether to attribute certain condi- 

 tions to the plants, or the animal. Dr. Miles referred to what he 

 calls the individual peculiarities of animals. Botanists recognize 

 very great peculiarities in plants, that they readily see and recog- 

 nize, but cannot describe ; it is what Linnaeus has termed " physi- 

 ological peculiarities of plants " — some hidden mystery about 

 them, something that controls them, something that we see, but 

 do not. yet understand, and probably never will. For instance, 

 you take two seeds of an apple, apparently alike, and plant them. 

 One developes into a tree, which bears a large, excellent fruit— a 

 tree of vigorous growth and handsome appearance ; the other 

 develops into a small tree, producing a fruit of little or no value. 

 Perhaps tlfe conditions of the soil and climate are precisely alike, 

 and yet these differences are developed in the growth of the 

 different seeds. The same truth applies, only, perhaps, to a less 

 extent, to every plant that the farmer grows in a field, to every 

 plant of grain in a field of wheat or corn. So, when we take these 

 plants and subject them to culture, to see what method is most 

 valuable, we cannot tell whether it is a difference in culture that 

 is productive of the different results, so much as individual differ- 

 ences in the plants themselves. So, in every way in which we look 

 at these experiments, difficulties present themselves. I would not 

 infer that all experiments are of no value, because I believe they 



