t04 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



* 



the largest yield. This matter will be Avorked over and .over for several 

 years to come until it is safe to make definite pronouncements. 



The fact that the fiftieth birthday of the college occurred on the 13th 

 of Mav, made it wise for the experiment station to prepare and present 

 for publication a bulletin giving the history of experimentation at this 

 institution from the day of its foundation to the present. Such a his- 

 tory has been begun under the direct supervision and planning of the 

 director by Professor J. D. Towar. The reports of the Upper Penin- 

 sula and South Haven sub-stations are attached to and made a part 

 of this report. 



Through the co-operation of some thirty farmers in different parts of 

 the state, the station is giving the farmers the benefit of its selections of 

 corn, oats and wheat. The results of this work will be published briefly 

 later, although the benefit accrued not through the publication, but 

 through the actual use of the seed grains sent out. 



CD. SMITH, 



Agricultural College, Michigan, June 30, 1007. 



Director. 



REPORT OF BACTERIOLOGIST. 



To Director C. D. Smith: 



For some years it has been the policy of this laboratory to strive 

 towards more technical investigations, believing that the interests of 

 agriculture would be best subserved by so doing; at the same time the 

 necessity for ready results to meet the demands of the farmer has not 

 been disregarded. ^ The results of this policy are only manifest to the 

 outsider by the bulletins issued. 



Changes" are taking place and among these changes, it seems to me 

 I am able to note a disposition on the part of the agricultural educator 

 and experimenter to play the role of populariser and interpreter of 

 scientific results and scientists, although he does it many times to 

 his own detriment and that of the scientist. To my mind there are 

 good features in this, and, in many instances, this method would be 

 desirable not only to the scientist, who prefers to talk in his own 

 language, but also for the scientific-practical-agricultural educator or 

 experimenter. To be a good scientist too much time cannot be spent 

 in dissipation along lines remote to his work; to be a good scientific- 

 practical-agriculturnl educator or experimenter too much time cannot 

 be given to the technique of a scientist, but let both work to the ad- 

 vantage of each other and consequently to the advantage of the farmer. 



If the above view is correct, it follows that the scientist, so far as 

 investigations are concerned, can best give his time to the discovery of 

 new truths or facts or to the study of old truths or facts in new re- 

 lationships or settings. 



Truth, as considered by man, is never absolute, but relative. To ex- 

 plain more fully, the truth of today may be an untruth of tomorrow. 

 This is doubtless on account of man's limitations of vision. He can 

 see but one setting for what to him is a truth. Persisting in 



