16 Director's Report of the 



was subsequently stated that ' everything points, therefore, to the 

 conclusion that the experiment stations of this State should give 

 prominent consideration to whatever will promote these two lines 

 of practice.' 



" This building is one step in the pursuance of the policy thus 

 enunciated. It is to harbor, as the report of the building com- 

 mittee states, the departments of dairying and horticulture, with 

 those of botany, bacteriology and entomology, the three latter 

 being really largely adjuncts of the two former. Dairying is an 

 art, but it is one that is being materially modified by the results 

 reached through chemical and bacteriological research. Horti- 

 culture is also an art, a many-sided one, and it is each year be- 

 coming more and more dependent upon the information supplied 

 by the botanist and entomologist. 



"Another statement was made in the director's report for 1896, 

 which is also pertinent to this occasion, and which is quoted at 

 length : 'If we base the reply to this question (How can the 

 farmer's interests best be served?) upon experience, the answer 

 must be that the farmer will best be served even from a business 

 point of view by a rigid inquiry into the facts and principles which 

 underlie his practice. The knowledge which, in its application to 

 agriculture, has been in the past fruitful of the best results, is that 

 which has come from investigations in the field of pure science, 

 and this will undoubtedly be true in the future. Tests of theories 

 and illustrative experiments in matters pertaining to the business 

 of farming are useful and even necessary, but all safe and per- 

 manent advance must proceed primarily from a study of funda- 

 mentals. Judged in the light of these statements, then, the real 

 function of the Experiment Station is to conduct severe scientific 

 inquiry in those lines related to the practice of agriculture and, 

 therefore, the controlling policy of this Station should be to 

 strengthen and develop its facilities for making such research 

 exhaustive and conclusive.' In providing these laboratories this 

 Experiment Station is trying to live up to its declaration of prin- 



