Extension Work in Horticulture. 



The Honorohle Commissioner of Agriculture^ Albany : 



Sir. — A report of progress of the work which has been under- 

 taken by the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station 

 in pursuance of the requirements of the Experiment Station 

 Extension bill, is herewith submitted. 



At the outset, it is proper to say that this bill originated entirely 

 with the people. The beginnings of it occurred in 1893, when 

 certain Chautauqua county persons asked the Station to undertake 

 some experiment work in their vineyards. We replied that while we 

 should like to take up the investigations, our funds were insufficient 

 to meet the expense without endangering work in which we were 

 already engaged ; and this lack of funds would be keenly felt if 

 other sections of the State should also, following the Chautauqua 

 example, ask for help. We suggested to them, therefore, that if 

 their local horticultural society could raise sufficient funds to meet 

 the expense of fertilizers, traveling and incidentals, we should try 

 to detail a man to look after the work. The matter dropped here; 

 but the next winter we heard of a movement on foot amongst the 

 Chautauqua people to obtain a small State appropriation to pay for 

 experiment work in their vineyards. The movement was placed in 

 the hands of S. F. Nixon, assemblyman from Chautauqua county, 

 who early in 1894, obtained a grant of $16,000, one-half of which 

 was to be expended by the Cornell Experiment Station in work in 

 horticulture in the Fifth Judicial Department of the State, an area 

 comprising sixteen counties of western New York. This is the 

 only instance, so far as I know, of a movement for experiment 

 station work which has been initiated and pushed to a final passage 

 wholly by a farming community. The laws upon which our land- 

 grant colleges and the agricultural experiment stations are founded 

 were conceived and completed almost wholly by a comparatively 

 small body of educators and experimenters, aided by persons in the 

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