212 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



tions under the direct control of the department in Alaska, Hawaii, 

 Porto Ilico, and Guam. It also undertook work having as its object 

 the promotion of farmers' institutes and otlier forms of extension 

 work, and was assigned the management of special investigations in 

 irrigation and drainage. 



PUBLICATIONS. 



The publications of the oflfice, which furnish a fair index of its 

 activities, increased from 39 documents, containing 2,600 pages, in 

 1897, to 85 documents, containing 4,761 pages, in 1912. 



The Experiment Station Eecord, which reviews the world's litera- 

 ture on scientific agriculture for the use of investigators in this line, 

 in 1897 consisted of one volume of 1,210 pages, containing 1,565 

 abstracts. In the year ending June 30, 1912, two volumes of the 

 Record were issued, each containing nearly 1,000 pages, and contain- 

 ing in the aggregate 7,800 abstracts. The Eecord about doubled in 

 size in this time, and the volume of literature reviewed in it more than 

 doubled. 



In 1897 a series of popular bulletins, known as Experiment Sta- 

 tion Work and published in the Farmers" Bulletin series of the de- 

 partment, was begun, to supplement the Record and disseminate 

 the results of the more practical work of the experiment stations. 

 Up to date there have been issued 70 numbers of this series of bulle- 

 tins, containing over 600 articles on a variety of topics of interest to 

 the practical farmer. 



GROWTH OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



The growth and development of the experiment stations during the 

 past 16 years is also indicative of the growth of the office during this 

 period. In 1897 the stations employed 628 persons in the work of 

 administration and research, while in 1911, the last year for which 

 statistics are available, the stations employed 1,567 persons in their 

 administrative, research, and other lines of work. Likewise in 1897 

 the stations had a total income of $1,129,833, of which $720,000 rep- 

 resented the Hatch Act, while in 1911 their total income was 

 $3,662,425, of which $1,440,000 was received from the United States 

 under the Hatch and Adams Acts. In other words, the employees 

 and income of the stations more than doubled during the period 

 named. 



THE ADAMS ACT. 



The Adams Act, passed in 1906, doubled the Federal appropria- 

 tions to the State experiment stations and greatly increased the duties 

 of the office in relation to the use of these funds for research work. 

 The legality of the expenditures is so largely dependent upon the 



