164 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



In 1895 the work was placed in tlie hands of the director of tlie 

 station (who was absent the previous year) and the writer, bnt the 

 immediate charge of it was given, as the year before, to the latter 

 officer. Some additional help was secured because of the larger 

 work which was demanded by the larger appropriation ; but in gen- 

 eral the enterprise went forward upon the same lines as in 1894., 



1. Hesearch OR Experiment. 



There are two types of experiment work which the people seemed 

 to require of us. One type is a demand for more exact knowledge 

 upon many rural problems ; and in order to obtain this knowledge 

 it was thought best to prosecute the inquiries at the Station at 

 Ithaca where there are facilities for scientilic work and where the 

 experiments can be given that personal attention which is absolutely 

 essential to truthful results. The other type of experiment is a 

 demand for actual tests of fertilizers, spraying, methods of tillage, 

 and the like, which shall be made upon the farms in various parts of 

 the territory, and where they may be seen by the farmers them- 

 selves. These experiments are rather more object lessons than 

 scientific research for they are largely concerned with problems 

 which are already well understood, and their results are not capable 

 of such exact analysis as are those which are obtained from painstak- 

 ing and long continued experiments at the home station. This 

 latter category comes rather more directly under the head of teach- 

 ing than of experiment. 



Arrangements were at once made to take up certain lines of 

 experiment at Ithaca which the fifth judicial department seems 

 to need ; and several lines of inquiry which had been already 

 undertaken by the station and had been discontinued because 

 of lack of funds, were again taken up, since they were capable 

 of yielding quicker results, and with much less expenditure of 

 money, than experiments which should be newly started. Some 

 of the inquiries which were completed and published from 

 this state fund in this way are: Apricot Growing in western New 

 York ; The Cultivation of Orchards ; The Grafting of Grapes • 

 The Native Dwarf Cherries; Black-Knot of Plums and Cherries, 

 and Methods of Treatment ; The Spraying of Orchards ; Winter 

 Muskmelons; Forcing-House Miscellanies (comprising accounts of 



