AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WORK: 

 SKETCH OF ITS ORIGIN AND PROGRESS. 



The law under which the extension teaching of agriculture is 

 now being prosecuted in New York State by the College of Agri- 

 culture of Cornell University, at first was an Experiment Station 

 measure. The bill originated entirely with the people, when, in 

 1893, certain Chautauqua County persons asked the Station to 

 undertake 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, there- 

 fore, that if their local horticultural society could raise sufficient 

 funds to meet the expense of fertilizers, traveling and incidentals, 

 we would try to detail a man to look after the work. The matter 

 dropped there ; but the next winter we heard of a movement 

 among the Chautauqua people to obtain a small state appropria- 

 tion to pay for experiment work in their vineyards. The pro- 

 ject 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 we know, 

 of a movement for experiment station work which has been ini- 

 tiated and pushed to a final passage wholly by a farming com- 

 munity. 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 educa- 

 tors and experimenters, aided by persons in the various pro- 

 fessions. 



The clause in the law of 1894 which appropriated money to 



