738 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



agency for publishinjr the research work of the stations is still lack- 

 ing and the need for this is becoming more acute as time goes on. 

 Investigations in various lines are being brought to completion and 

 the data await publication. In one instance very extensive records 

 of the relation of feed to the requirement of dairy cows have been in 

 progress for many years, without any visible outlet for their publica- 

 tion. In another the results of bacteriological studies of the soil in 

 relation to fertility are filed aAvay ready to be published when oppor- 

 tunity olTers. Others, embodying the results of long-continued field 

 experiments, are confined to the record books of the station, and the 

 product of studies upon the principles of breeding plants and animals 

 are accumulating in volume. There is at present no outlook in si^ht 

 for the publication of a series of fundamental studies on the function 

 of food in animal nutrition, physiological investigations in relation 

 to ventilation, investigations on the rusts of plants, the relation of 

 environment to disease in plants, life-history studies of economic in- 

 sects, and a long list of investigations of a character too technical for 

 presentation in the station bulletins. In a number of known in- 

 stances the attempt has not been made to compile the data for final 

 publication because of the lack of any suitable agency through w^hich 

 to issue it ; and this difficulty of securing adequate publication has 

 been a discouraging element to station investigators, who have seen 

 the readiness with which more popular work was printed and the in- 

 terest and credit which it brought. The encouragement of research 

 would be one of the most potent results of providing a suitable scien- 

 tific journal for the presentation of results. 



In one or two instances the pressure upon the stationshas been 

 relieved by starting a technical series of bulletins, but this is only 

 partially satisfactory, as the bulletins are easily lost and the accounts 

 of the work are widely scattered. The individual articles do not 

 reach the scientific readers they should, and they are not listed and 

 indexed with scientific publications, and hence are likely to be lost 

 sight of in a short time. The experience with the station bulletins 

 in the past is an indication of the unsatisfactory character of a tech- 

 nical series for the research work. Collections of these bulletins are 

 very largely confined to the libraries of a few institutions and still 

 fewer individuals, with the result that often the only record of the 

 station investigations available to the general public is to be found 

 in abstract journals. Aside from this, the results of these researches 

 are not merely of local interest within the State where they are made, 

 but are most of them of national interest as marking the progress of 

 science in agriculture. Their publication in a form which wdll be 

 conveniently accessible is therefore a matter of national concern. 



In some "instances the purely practical deductions from these in- 

 vestigations have been set forth in popular bulletins, which, how- 

 ever, give a decidedly inadequate idea of the real character of the 

 investigations or of the nature of the data upon whidi the summaries 

 rest. The publication of these researches in technical and scientific 

 journals has met with only partial success, the objection being that 

 the papers are widely scattered and they do not reach the audience 

 it is desired to reach. A considerable number of papers have been 

 published in foreign periodicals and in a foreign tongue. One 

 worker has had accepted by a foreign journal of agricultural science 

 a paper which has been awaiting publication for over a year. The 



