xiv Report of the Director 



pul)lic speaking, in parliamentary practice, and in extension projects and 

 methods. 



Investigation 



It is of course well understood that experiment and research are 

 essential to any college of agriculture, and therefore the subject hardly 

 need be discussed here. It may be well, however, to call attention briefly 

 to the experiment station work. The Cornell University Agricultural 

 Experiment Station is established on the two Federal Experiment Station 

 Acts, the Hatch Act, 1887, and the Adams Act, 1906. As early as 1879, 

 however, an experiment station was established at Cornell University, 

 but it was not supported by public funds. 



Research is the discovery of truth for the sake of truth. The results 

 and the spirit of research are indispensable to teaching. Agriculture is 

 not to be taught from books or from tradition, but from the facts and 

 principles that underlie the best practice. A good .part of the scientific 

 basis of agriculture is yet unknown. The most careful investigation is 

 needed to discover these facts and principles. All good teaching must be 

 founded on this discovery. It is not possible to have the best education 

 if investigation is entirely separate from teaching. The teacher must 

 have the incentive, the spirit, and the new knowledge that come from 

 original inquiry, and the students must be in actual contact with active 

 investigational work. The whole spirit of a college of agriculture is to 

 investigate and to apply. 



As a matter of administration, it is not possible wholly to separate the 

 three lines of experiment, teaching, and extension into staffs or faculties. 

 But there should be some officers that function chiefly as experimenters 

 and others chiefly as extension workers. If the staff is sufficiently large 

 and the various lines of work are properly organized, there is little danger 

 that the specialists will be drawn oft" from their special problems by the 

 developing of all kinds of work coincidently in a college of agriculture. 

 This docs not imply that every investigator shall actually be a teacher, 

 for it is best for research that certain persons give all their time to it. 

 Experiment work may be completely divorced from teaching, but teach- 

 ing cannot be divorced from experiment. It is well, in other words, to 

 have endowed chairs of research in a college of agriculture. The example 

 of such endowed research is of itself worth while also to the teaching 

 side. At the New York State College of Agriculture there are three 

 lines of work endowed specially for research (on the Federal funds) — 

 soils, economic entomology, plant-breeding. All other departments deal- 

 ing with agricultural subject-matter are expected to engage in research 

 and experiment so far as they may have time and means, and the officers 

 engaged in such investigation are by that fact members of the experiment 

 station staff. 



