Extension Work in Horticulture. 535 



bugs and special difficulties. These things have driven people to 

 thinking and to asking for information. The agricultural com- 

 munities are thoroughly aroused, and now is the time to teach. 

 When one is thoroughly prosperous in his business, there is little 

 chance— as, in fact, there is generally little need— of teaching 

 him other methods. 



I miist hasten to say that the agricultural status in Western 

 New York is not such a deplorable one as my reader may sup- 

 pose, or as he may infer from my preceding remarks. Those 

 farmers who grow various and difficult crops are wide awake, 

 intelligent, aggressive and for the most part contented. The 

 man who grows only a few and staple crops is very apt to fall into 

 stereotyped ways of thinking, which may mean that he drops 

 behind the times. Just as fast as more varied farming is forced 

 upon the agricultural communities by the inexorable struggle for 

 existence, will the farmer's horizon and sympathies enlarge; and 

 with the progress of this broadening and educative impulse — 

 which now, fortunately, is rapidly rising — the farmers will find 

 themselves in position to correct whatever minor faults of leg- 

 islation that may have occurred, and to direct and control the 

 social forces with which they are concerned. 



We might classify our efforts to reach the people, in the pro- 

 gress of our work, under five general heads. These efforts have 

 all been experiments in methods of extension teaching as applied 

 to horticulture. We have tried to ascertain the value of: 



1. The itinerant or local experiment as a means of teaching. 



2. The readable expository bulletin. 



3. The itinerant horticultural school. 



4. Elementary instruction in the rural schools. 



5. Instruction by means Of correspondence and reading courses. 

 Unless all signs are deceptive, the greatest good which has 



yet been accomplished has come through the bulletins. We have 

 wished that we might be able to make bulletins which would 

 interest the reader aside from the information which they con- 

 tain. We should have liked to put juice into them, for pemmi- 

 €an, whilst exceedingly nutritious, is difficult of digestion. 



