1882.] farmers' convention. 55 



about agricultural productions, or the production of milk and 

 butter, and be has found that a small fraction of them were 

 fraudulent to start with — made out of whole cloth ; that just 

 about one-third were totally unreliable; that another third 

 were greatly exaggerated, and that another third had some 

 basis to stand upon ; so that he brings down the number that 

 have any value or reliability to a very few. 



Now, those of us who are breeding cows or who are feed- 

 ing cattle for butter or milk want animals from the family of 

 the third portion of this great number of which these stories 

 are told, and we want to be assured, by some competent 

 authority, that they are true. The person to whom 1 have 

 referred is a private gentleman, who has no authority behind 

 him ii! this matter, and those persons whom he decides against 

 in the cases in whicli he acts as a self-constituted judge will 

 of course oppose him directly. But suppose those questions 

 were referred to a state authority in agricultural matters, or 

 to a state experiment station, or to the exclusive authority of a 

 state board of agriculture, and should be passed upon there; 

 by that means, certainly, we should be protected against a 

 great many of these matters which are creeping into print 

 and attracting general notice which now are misleading, and 

 I think a service could be rendered to the farmers of the 

 country that would be fully equal to what we all recognize as 

 the very great service which has been rendered to agriculture 

 by the investigations of the commercial fertilizers of the 

 country during the past few years. 



The Chairman. I see Prof. Johnson, the director of the 

 Agricultural Experiment Station of Connecticut, is present. 

 We should like to hear from him, as the subject under con- 

 sideration is one in which he is peculiarly interested. 



Prof. Johnson. Dr. Sturtevant has read a very interest- 

 ing and very valuable paper. He has made us ashamed that 

 we have not such an experiment station as we ought to have, 

 to grapple with questions the solution of which is so import- 

 ant to us, and the lack of whose solution is costing us every 

 day a great deal of money. As director of the Connecticut 

 Experiment Station, I have always felt that we had not a 



