ANKUAL MEETING. 53 



tion of our agriculture college and experiment station; that we may better 

 understand their relation to our worli. Early in the sixties that far- 

 sighted congressman, Justin Morrill, of Vermont, realizing the need of a 

 better understanding of underlying principles in agriculture and me- 

 chanic arts, succeeded in securing the passage of the Morrill land grant 

 act, which gave to every State that would establish an agriculture col- 

 lege, certain lands, the sale of which provided a fund which should be- 

 come a permanent endowment fund. 



An old bachelor, John Purdue, who had made much money on the 

 Wabash canal, proposed to the Indiana Legislature that it accept this 

 Government land grant and establish the Indiana Agriculture College on 

 lands in West Lafayette, which he Avith others would donate. This offer 

 was accepted, and out of respect for John Purdue and his work the name 

 was changed from Indiana Agriculture College to Purdue University. 



As a result of the Morrill laud grant act, there has been established 

 in nearly every State in the Union an agriculture college or agriculture 

 department in a college already in existence. Indiana, Michigan, Iowa 

 and others have a land grant college. In Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and 

 others the agricultiu-e school is a department of the State university. 



In our own State the manufacturing interests have been quicker to 

 recognize the value of college training, with the result that the engineer- 

 ing work has outgrown the agricultural and given our institution a world 

 Avide reputation for its achievements in engineering. The last few years 

 have seen an awakening in agriculture. We have a new agricultural 

 building and an increasing number of students, though the number is not 

 nearly in proportion to the importance of the agricultural interests of the 

 State. ' 



After the establishment of the agriculture college, it became apparent 

 that while we were trying to teach the science of agriculture we only 

 knew thoroughly and accurately a very small proportion of what we 

 ought to know; that it was important that some systematic work be done 

 looking to the discovery of new truths and methods of making the old 

 ones useful in everj'day farm practice. 



In 1887, or thereabouts, Congress passed the Hatch act, giving each 

 State $15,000 annually for experiment and research. As the best trained 

 men for this worlc were naturally to be found in the agriculture colleges, 

 our experiment stations have been organized in connection with the 

 school of agriculture in the respective States, except in a few cases, not- 

 ably in Ohio, where the station is entirely separate and the investigators 

 are not interrupted by the necessity of meeting classes. 



Some of the first results of the experiment station work was that 

 with commercial fertilizer, which has resulted in the saving of millions 

 of dollars formerly spent for worthless materials. The introduction of 

 the Babcock test making it possible to determine accurately and quickly 

 the butter making value of milk, and the losses by imperfect skimming 



