£96 ANNUAL, REPORT OF TH12 OfC. DoC. 



schools should furnish excellent conditions for such experiments. 

 The rural school being far the most important of all schools devoted 

 to countrj' life should be studied by actual experiments. No other 

 one object in agriculture is so much in need of investigation. Pos- 

 sibly legislative bodies and men in practical affairs must make the 

 iirst move, as in the creation of agricultural colleges and as in 

 financing agricultural high schools. 



Mr. Chairman, I think I have talked too long. I am glad to be 

 here and see the faces of men like your Secretary, Mr. Critchiield, 

 whom I have just met, and of Dr. Armsby in whose class I used to 

 be when I went to college (not that I mean to imply that he is old), 

 and of Dr. Hunt, the man among all other men best fitted to the 

 position to which he was called. I should like to say more about 

 these people, but I have already talked itoo long, and I thank you 

 for your attention. 



PENNSYLVANIA STOCKMEN AND MEAT INSPECTION LAW 



By DR. THOMAS F. HUNT, State College. Pa. 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Eight years ago I stood 

 one Sunday on the Great Salt Air Bathing Pavilion at Salt Lake 

 City, and looked over that broad stretch of country, and I thought 

 of Dickens' remark that he did not know auything deader than a 

 door nail except a coffin nail. He could not have stood v/here I 

 did, and looked over that vast stretch of country without a sign of 

 living vegetation, and standing there, looking over that broad stretch 

 of dead country, you can judge my surprise when I found later that 

 that broad area of dead land of which I am speaking was once laid 

 out in fer'tile farms that were the pride of the early settlers of Salt 

 Lake City. But the vegetation failed through lack of irrigation 

 in that land of the alkali, wherein no living thing can flourish with- 

 out it, and the farmer moved ofE. Now, that is a particularly strik- 

 ing illustration, and I use it to show you the foes that have sur- 

 rounded the alkali sections of the ITnited States. 



Then, I took the train for San Francisco, and if you read the 

 glowing account of the railroad circulars, you will expect to find 

 yourself at once in the beautiful valley of the Sierra Nevada; they 

 give you a fine description of it, but they fail to say anything about 

 the two nights and days you must spend in travelling through the 

 alkali desert where the alkali dust almost chokes you, and there is 

 no sign of any living thing. 



Well, the next morning I got up, and I asked ''What State is this?" 

 and they said "It is Utah;" I said "Wliy, I thought I was in Cali- 

 fornia by this time," and they said "No, this is Utah yet." Then I 

 asked them "Is not this the trail of the Forty-niner?" They told 

 me it was, and looking over that vast expanse of desert, where there 

 is no living thing, I said ^'But how could he get through here alive?" 

 He had horses, for there were no trains, and he could not travel 



