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 686.-CUBAS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



The following notice of the institution of an Agricultural 

 Experiment Station in the Island of Culm, should nut we think 

 be allowed to pass without a word of welcome from the Trinidad 

 Station. The importance of Agricultural pursuits in the Island of 

 Cuba has been recognised, we are glad to say, by the appointment of 

 an able staff to govern and control the new station, and we wish it a 

 successful and prosperous career : — 



" Cuba is determined to avail herself of all the resources of modern 

 technology in her agriculture, and has now fairly launched her first 

 agriculture experimeut station. Prof. F. S. Earle has been named as 

 its director. He had already been appointed by the U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture to take charge of the American station in Porto Rico, 

 but, on the request of the Cuban government for a competent man, 

 Prof. Earle, with the consent of the department, and on its recom- 

 mendations, consented to go to Cuba. Prof. Earle has long been a 

 student of scientific agriculture, has been a fruit grower and shipper 

 on a large scale, and occupied the position of horticulturist at the 

 Alabama Experiment Station, and of Professor of Biology at the 

 Alabama Pulytechnique Institute. He resigned the latter position to 

 go to the New York Botanic Gardens where his work brought him into 

 close relations with various parts of the West Indies and caused his final 

 selection for the Porto Rico station. 



" The Department of General Agriculture will be under the 

 management of Prof. Francisco B. Cruz, and the principal agricultural 

 crops of Cuba, including sugar cane, cotton, tobacco, corn, &c, will be 

 under his direct management. Prof. Cruz is a graduate of the Univer- 

 sity of Havana, and during the past five years has been Secretary of 

 the Junta Provinciale de Agricultura of Pinar del Rio and more re- 

 cently he has been director of the agricultural department of the new 

 Central Agricultural Station, and has inaugurated many investigations 

 in the matter of cultivating, fertilizing and irrigating sugar cane and 

 tobacco. 



" The Department of Horticulture will be under the cotrol of Prof. 

 C. F. Austin, who has served as horticulturist at the Montana Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station, and as assistant horticulturist at the 

 Alabama Station, and as horticulturist also at the Maryland Experiment 

 Station, resigning the latter position to accept his present place. 

 The acting chief of the Central Agricultural Station is Mr. Miguel 

 Esnard, a Cuban graduate of the Louisiana State University, where 

 he made a sjtecial study of sugar chemistry. His experience in 

 Louisiana will doubtless be of great value to him in taking up a 

 similar line of duties and investigations in Cuba. 



" Prof. C. F. Baker has been given the direction of the Botanical 

 Department. He has been devoting years to this study and in various 

 states of the federal union. Dr. Mel T. Cook has been named as the 

 chief of the department of vegetables of the Cuban Station. Dr. 

 Cook was a professor at the DePauw University at Greencastle, 

 Indiana, for nine years, and for the past two years has been special 

 lecturer at the Medical College of Indiana at Indianapolis. 



