bfiCEMBEK MEET] NO. ol.'3 



shall get hopelessly lost in li laljyl'inth of testunony mid give tlie theory \\\) in 

 disgust. A man may he a pretty good swimmer with nothing to hinder him, 

 hut with a covering of winter clotliing and a drowning man hold of each leg, lie 

 may ho lost liimself; so in experimenting one may he skillful in watcliing a 

 simple piocess for a negative or positive result; hut when he so places liis 

 experiment as to he perturhed to a considerahic extent, he may he far from 

 sufficient to get at a correct judgment. 



Again, proof positive ujion never so small a point is worth a good deal as a 

 ■stepping-stone to other judgments of more sweeping iip])lication ; hence there 

 is great value in ahsolute certainty of little decisions, the result of experiment, 

 in reaching out after facts of greater import. 



And one further reason I might mention for perfect simplicity of methods. 

 We do not experiment for ourselves alone. The very fact of our performing a 

 careful experiment indicates a henevolent purpose ; and if our work is for the 

 world, it should he so simple in its processes as to he easily comprehended hy 

 all who arc to he benefited hy its results. 



WHAT IS NEW? 



To be a successful exiierimenter one needs to have some knowledge of what 

 has been accomplished in the department he takes up for investigation, and ns 

 I have already indicated, the histor}' of any branch of agricultui'o or horticul- 

 ture will show that a great many things have been tested, over and over again, 

 by persons ignorant of each other's work. 



We scarcely pick up an agricultural paper without finding something that 

 claims the attention of the reader because it is new and original, and thoroughly 

 -o^ood. Glancing them over, in one there is a "new method uf cultivating 

 wheat" that attracts the attention. It may be new to the author, but to the 

 world it is as old as tlie Christian era, for Virgil describes the same process in 

 detail. Turning to the horticultural department of the same paper, the lead- 

 ing article assumes to teach a "new method of training the grape," and gives 

 the advantages of the process, which, if truthful, would certainly entitle the 

 method to the term "good." But when the writer assumes it to be new, he 

 exhibits the fact that he is unacquainted with the history of grape culture even 

 in our own country, for turning to an early volume of the Cultivator we find 

 the same method fully illustrated and explained. 



A scientific man who can lay claim to a large amount of general information 

 and who evidently is a careful student and ripe scholar is giving in one of our 

 papers "A new theory of tillage," and still, after a careful perusal, one wdio 

 has a good library of agricultural works from Jethro Tulle down to Waring 

 can open to places here and there wdiere he will find, not only this same theory 

 carefully given, but great quantities of facts upon which the hypothetical 

 method rests. 



Pear blight has a new theory devoted to it every few weeks, but nearly all of 

 them that have any claim upon our attention are simply a rehash of an old 

 theor}', and generally as worthless as they are old. A gardener of considera- 

 ble note in a recent paper gives "anew method of propagating soft wooded 

 plants." The great advantages of the process are given in detail, but a pic- 

 ture in a book ui)on a shelf in my library, fifty years old, gives a clearer idea 

 than all his words of the same process. 



This discovery of new things and new methods and new theories is largely a 

 piece of imposition upon the agricultural editors, who cannot know everything 



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