AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS 295 



an established agricultural law. It seems to me the argument is 

 sound in the matter of the proposed co-operation. How far this 

 co-operation can go will be determined by the nature of the exper- 

 iments. We shall see how far we are under different conditions, 

 such as will compel us to make allowances for.our own and other 

 experiments. To me it is a very serious practical question, and I 

 suppose it is to the gentlemen connected with these institutions. 

 The public arc expecting certain things of us. They ask us to do, 

 perhaps, what we can not. They ask that we shall so experiment 

 as to discover for them how they may cultivate corn to the best 

 advantage in this and other States ; or how to feed animals, or 

 what varieties of corn are best worth cultivating. The}' - ask us to 

 enter upon a set of experiments to determine it. 



« 



Suppose you in Pennsylvania, or in Wisconsin or Michigan, go 

 and work isolated and alone, and the rest of us wait until you 

 have accomplished your experimentation ; you reach a result and 

 you publish it to the world, and the first practical farmer that 

 makes a trial of that supposed result and law, discovers that it 

 won't hold in his community, and at once throws contempt upon 

 your agricultural science, and convicts you, as he says of not know- 

 ing what you are about, and pretending to discover some things 

 which are not true. If, instead of conducting the experiment in 

 isolated schools and not helping each other at all, we are pre- 

 pared to say that a set of precisely similar experiments, arranged 

 by the same man, and conducted according to the same rules, and 

 as far as possible in the same manner, produces such and such 

 results, we defend ourselves against unjust criticisms at least, and 

 put ourselves and the whole public with us on to vantage ground, for 

 giving new investigations, if no more. We are at least all agreed 

 in one thing, which Herbert Spencer says: "Scientists and 

 religionists are all agreed in, if in nothing else, that there is some- 

 thing to'be known, there is something to be discovered." There 

 are some questions to be asked, but I doubt whether you are 

 prepared' to state distinctly and fully' just what the questions are 

 that are to be settled. Strip them naked and set them before us, 

 and see if we can determine precisely what is to be experimented 

 upon. We want to experiment in order to learn how to experi- 

 ment, and to know what road wjs want to travel and what results 

 we ought to aim for. What we want ultimately to reach is a law 

 — not a fact — but a law. Ultimately, truth ; but what law, what 

 truth ? Who will tell us ? Will Dr. Miles ? I do not know of 



