No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 391 



Most of you know that our agricultural colleges were established 

 as a result of the land grant act of 1863. These colleges had not 

 long been engaged in their work of trying to teach the principles 

 of science which underlie successful farm practice, when it became 

 apparent that there was not only need of a class of men who knew 

 the science, its application to the art, and had ability to impart the 

 knowledge to others, but there was need of much experimental in- 

 vestigation in order that many problems might be better understood. 

 To meet this need Congress in 1887 passed the act that has given 

 to every state in the~Union an Experiment Station. In the beginning 

 many of these stations were manned in part at least by men who 

 had had no experience in the work they were to do. Is it any wonder 

 that they found it diflicult and that the farmer did not always ap- 

 prove of their work, impatient as he usually is for immediate '^prac- 

 tical" results? Thanks to the farmers' institutes and other agencies 

 the past few years has demonstrated that the Experiment Station 

 has a useful place and the results of their work are becoming more 

 and more apparent. 



Not only are they showing us new truths, but they are helping 

 to bring it to the attention of larger numbers of people, through the 

 medium of cooperative or demonstration experiments conducted 

 on the farms of private individuals in many parts of the several 

 states. 



In Canada they have several thousand men scattered throughout 

 the country who are growing wheat, oats and crops of all kinds 

 under the direction of the Central Experiment Station. The con- 

 clusions drawn from their work are published and distributed 

 throughout the country. 



Two results of this work are: first the good to the men who have 

 done it under the direction of the Experiment Station. Second, any 

 addition to the sum of our knowledge. 



Most of us are not like the electric motor moving steadily on be- 

 cause of the constant pull of the unseen current, but we are rather 

 like the gasoline engine with its noisy explosion every three or four 

 revolutions of the wheel, increasing the speed which gradually 

 lessens till the next charge is exploded; if the explosion fails to take 

 place then the engine gradually comes to a stop. So with us, we 

 need an explosion of some kind every now and then to keep us doing 

 our best. 



There is no reason why most of us might not be conducting some 

 experiments on our farms that would add to our knowledge and 

 increase the profits of our business, but we need the additional 

 incentive of the ''doing it for the Experiment Station" to induce 

 us to keep the record of careful observations that are required to 

 make the work most helpful. 



In Illinois the Station hires the land needed in different localities 

 and for a longer or shorter time conducts its experiments under the 

 immediate supervision of its own trained men. 



Indiana last year had some five hundred cooperative experiments 

 in progress, nearly every county in the state having at least one or 

 more. 



They are of two classes: one in which a man from the Experiment 

 Station goes to the outlying farm, selects a site to be planted, gives 



