16 THE CONNECTICUT AGEICULTUEAL 



are constantly assisting numberless projects which point with 

 more or less promise to improvement in the j^rocesses they employ 

 and to corresponding increase of their gains. 



They are able to secure to themselves by patent or by secrecy, 

 the fruit of their outlay. In agriculture, however, we want im- 

 provements in a multitude of details which can offer no considera- 

 ble pecuniary reward to the inventor or discoverer; improvements, 

 many of which in their nature are not patentable and which ought 

 to be made of universal avail to every landholder without restric- 

 tion or royalty. We know that these improvements and discov- 

 eries may be made or their impracticability demonstrated, and we 

 earnestly wish somebody would do it and thus give us relief. 

 But they are not realized, because for the most part they do not 

 offer sufficient inducements to stimulate investigators to work 

 them out. Men who have a genius for discovery labor for some 

 more or less tangible reward, at least the means of comfortable 

 living and enough besides to command books, apparatus, learned 

 societ}^, and the power of gratifying in all ways their passion 

 for seeing, knowing and experimenting. Unless Agriculture can 

 offer some of these inducements, she cannot expect the results to 

 which they lead. Occasionally a man of wealth and scientitic 

 tastes like Boussingault in France, Lawes in England, and Valen- 

 tine in New York, will work or aid work in this direction for the 

 pleasure and the fame of it. Occasionally a College Professor 

 may have energy enough to do something in this line besides 

 carrying the burden of academic duty. But the Experiment Sta- 

 tion is the institution that must ultimately be depended upon. 

 The Farmers of Connecticut have wanted it and at their word the 

 State has given it to them. If they want it enlarged, put u^3on a 

 broader and more practical basis, enabled to do more work and a 

 greater variety of work, they have but to decide upon a plan and 

 submit it to the General Assembly, where it will be passed upon 

 according to its merits. 



The initiative taken in this matter by Connecticut has found 

 response in other States. The New Jersey Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station was established by Act of Legislature in March, 1880, 

 with an appropriation of |5,000. The Station was located at New 

 Brunswick in connection with the State Agricultural College. On 

 the College Farm provided for that institution some years ago at 

 the expense of the State, the Experiment Station carried out sev- 

 eral series of practical feeding trials to test the value of the German 



