EXPERIMENT STATION. 15 



emioratino' thousands of other countries, and to defend their fire- 

 sides and their institutions against the armies of the world. 



Just as each citizen of our State and Union, working in our 

 governmental organization, is according to his talent and energy, 

 a potent agent in civil progress, so each farmer and gardener, 

 whether he labors with his own hands for daily bread or directs 

 the labor of others by the toil of his brain, becomes a discoverer 

 when he works under efficient scientific organization, and may 

 have the satisfaction of finding his good ideas and his accurate 

 observations recognized at their true value and usefully incorpo- 

 rated into the common fund of agricultural knowledge. 



Science is ready to do for our farming industries, what it has done 

 for our intellectual enjoyments. It is as able to trace the kinds, 

 the sources, and to control the movements of plant-food, to inves- 

 tigate the workings of manure, the effects of tillage or rainfall, 

 the traction of the plough, the rising of cream or any agricultural 

 question, as to guide the ship at sea by magnet and sextant, to 

 transmit messasres from town to town or from continent to conti- 

 nent by telegraph or telephone. 



But here again the results obtained must be proportioned to the 

 efforts used. Before we can conti'ol the production of a crop we 

 must learn in detail what are the exact conditions which, in the 

 plan of nature, invariably work together, and ai-e essential to vege- 

 table growth. To prosecute such studies successfully, is now a 

 comparatively simple matter, biit it cannot be done without cer- 

 tain apparatus, and it cannot be done advantageously without 

 various conveniences which are to be had by paying for them, but 

 which cannot be realized by wishing for them. Out of nothing 

 comes' nothing. 



The splendid successes of gas lighting, of the steam engine, the 

 telegraph, the electric light, of the arts of spinning, weaving and 

 dyeing, of glass and metal manufacture, and, in our own field, of 

 the mowing and reaping machine, have cost long and anxious 

 experimenting and heavy outlay for labor and materials. It can- 

 not be otherwise in respect to most of the unsolved questions that 

 we desire cleared up. In any direction where the investigator 

 can see before him the reasonable possibility of reaching a result 

 that will ensure large pecuniary reward, there is, generally s|)eak- 

 ing, no difficulty in securing from capitalists any requisite amount 

 of funds for prosecuting investigations. Many of our rich corpo- 

 rations, whose money has been made by scientific investigations, 



