AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS AND INDUSTRIAL FAIRS. 17 



ditions of Successful Experimenting/' delivered at our last session, 

 suggested to my mind a solution of the difficulties we so often 

 meet with in our experience as practical farmers and gardeners. 

 In experimenting, the " conditions," in some particular, not being 

 observed by us, are not complied with, and we fail to attain the 

 result reached by somebody else and forthwith conclude that some- 

 .body else is either a knave or a fool. Again, in experimenting 

 many people adopt a theory of their own and experiment to prove 

 it. Everything which does not go to prove it is thrown aside as 

 unsatisfactory, and everything which tends in any degree to cor- 

 roborate it is accepted, and magnified into positive proof, and every 

 experiment such a man tries only serves to confirm him more and 

 more in error if he- adopted a wrong theory in the beginning. 

 It is unpleasant and vexatious to read of somebody's very success- 

 ful experiment as published in the Farmer or some other of the 

 agricultural papers, and after we have expended care, thought 

 and money on a similar trial, to find ourselves sadly disappointed, 

 or, what is worse, " sold," and it makes no diflFerence practically 

 whether somebody else sells us or whether we sell ourselves. 



It was wisely suggested by the honorable gentleman from 

 Naples, Mr. Perley, that perhaps we had better not publish our 

 experiments, because of the danger of others being led astray by 

 not regarding all the conditions observed by us. 



In this dilemma what are we to do ? If we make any decided 

 improvement we must experiment, and to do this and fail three 

 times in four is uphill business. I am happy to know that this 

 contingency has been provided for by this same system of indus- 

 trial associations of which we have been speaking. I refer to the 

 College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, the permanent fund 

 for which was furnished from the public domain. By the wisdom 

 and liberality of our State legislature this college and the farm 

 connected with it are in sucessful operation ; the former under the 

 care of an earnest, efficient and laborious President, aided by able 

 Professors and Lecturers, and the farm is managed by a scientific 

 and practical farmer. This farm consists of about three hundred 

 acres and embi'aces many varieties of soil. Upon it are to be 

 tried complete and circumstantial experiments in floriculture, 

 horticulture, agriculture, including the cultivation of all the crops 

 grown in our State, together with scientific lectures on, and 

 practical experiments in draining. In these trials we shall have 

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