New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 17 



ciples. What is to be the work of the horticulturists ? Certainly 

 not merely to study the cultural side of the fruit-grower's business, 

 but to discover and formulate those laws of plant life which con- 

 trol all the practice of the garden and field. Prof. Beach will 

 use the implements of research more than he will the pruning 

 knife, however essential the latter may be. 



" It is not expected that the botanist, Mr. Stewart, will devote 

 himself wholly to naming new or unusual plants or to explaining 

 how to eradicate weeds, but much of his time will be spent in 

 searching out the hidden processes which have their course within 

 the tissues of plants. The microscope, the sterilizer and the in- 

 cubator will be his tools. The bacteriologist will also be a student 

 of those minute organisms which seem to have so profound a 

 relation to man's welfare, and this member of the Station's staff 

 will be most useful when he is most scientific. Possibly he may 

 spend days or months hunting for a single fact in the life history 

 of one of these germs. The entomological laboratory is not built 

 simply to contain a collection of ' bugs ' although it is very im- 

 portant to have such a collection for reference purposes. Mr. 

 Lowe will seek first for the life history of these little animals, 

 both troublesome and useful, and when he is successful he will se- 

 cure the data that are most valuable. 



" We shall come nearest to the practice of an art in the dairy 

 department, but the practical operations of the butter and cheese 

 room will not be of a commercial character. Our dairy apparatus 

 and our unique cheese-curing rooms are put into the hands of our 

 dairy expert simply that he may co-operate with the chemist and 

 bacteriologist in discovering the facts and principles fundamental 

 to a proper control of manufacturing processes. Unusually fine 

 equipment exists not to admire but to use in learning the effects 

 of temperature and other conditions upon the compounds and 

 organisms of our dairy products. 



" Is any one skeptical about all this effort being of use to 

 agriculture ? He may quiet his fears, for the history of the past 

 shows that the tiller of the soil will ultimately reap a benefit, 



2 



