220 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE OX BREEDING EXPERIMENTS. 



I. History. 



The outstanding event in connection with the work of the 

 committee during the past year which we have to record is the 

 lamented death of our chairman, Mr. Rutillus Alden. To 

 every member of the Maine Dairymen's Association the death 

 of Mr. Alden means much. It removes from our midst one of 

 our founders and a man who had done more to advance the 

 dairy interest of the state than perhaps any other one individual. 

 But to the members of this committee the loss of Mr. Alden 

 means perhaps more than to anyone else in the association. As 

 a member of the Council of the Maine Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, Mr. Alden was the first one, a number of years ago, to 

 advance the idea that the state should provide funds whereby 

 the Station could undertake comprehensive investigations on 

 the breeding of dairy animals. Mr. Alden never relinquished 

 this idea until it was accomplished. Only those of us who were 

 close to Mr. Alden in this work can know how near to his heart 

 was this idea of the necessiity for scientific investigations in 

 cattle breeding. Without special scientific training himself, he 

 saw with a vision as clear and a purpose as determined as that 

 of the world's greatest scientific men, that hope of real and per- 

 manent progress in agriculture lay in the prosiccution of funda- 

 mental scientific research on the principles which underlie the 

 practice of the art. We mourn his loss. 



II. Progress. 



Since the last meeting of the association work on the investi- 

 gations! which were outlined in the last report of your committee 

 has been prosecuted energetically and we are able to report 

 definite progress in several lines at this time. The preliminary 

 phase which occupied our time during the first year after the 

 appropriation was made has now largely been completed and we 

 are beginning to get to the point in the investigations where 

 every definite result gains points directly towards the final goal. 



In reporting the progress of the work we shall consider sepa- 

 rately each of the different lines being carried forward. 



