268 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



and for that purpose we must have the literature upon this 

 subject, and that is a large literature. As it happens, I have 

 been accumulating that literature, more or less, at my own 

 expense for thirty years back. I have a tolerably good library 

 in that direction, but I have not nearly all that ought to be in 

 a State institution of this sort. I often find that I have been 

 mousing around where somebody has been traveling in broad 

 daylight, and I might have known it if I had the information 

 at hand. The new experiment station ought to have in its 

 possession, as part of the property of the State of Connecti- 

 cut, accumulated for the benefit of the State, a complete 

 library of the literature of agricultural experiment gatliered 

 from all quarters where this sort of thing has been going on. 

 It ought to have the results of all the work now being done 

 by the hundred experiment stations in operation in Europe. 

 I have the reports of a few of those stations; I have a num- 

 ber of journals in the German language, some in French 

 which give the results, but there are many more which I do 

 not have, and which I can not have on my own account. 



Now, we ought to have a station able to expend five hund- 

 red dollars a year in getting this outside information. That 

 information, if it were disseminated through tlie State of 

 Connecticut, and put practically in the hands of the farmers 

 of Connecticut, would be worth a thousand dollars a week. 

 The information which is scattered abroad, if it could be 

 made available to you, as it is made available to farmers in 

 other lands, would be worth that amount of money, or some- 

 thing like it. That, then, is one of the things which ought to 

 be done. We want an experiment station set up on the same 

 basis that a post office is set up, not with luxury, but witli 

 convenience. We do not want any plush-covered chairs, or 

 any gilt spittoons, but we want the things to do the work 

 with. They cost money, but they do not cost any great 

 amount when we consider them in relation to the interests 

 which are served. 



I should say that twenty-five thousand dollars would give 

 us a model station, equal to anything they have anywhere, 

 and I should say tliat eight thousand dollars a year would run 



