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instructions and sent tliem seeds and encouraged them in tlieir work, and tliey 

 carried on experiments ; and from those 12 experimenters we received eight 

 good reports. The next year tliere were GO ; the next year there were 93 ; 

 and the worlv increased in interest and in value among the ex-students and also 

 among the farmers generally throughout the Province who came in touch with 

 the cooperative work. In 1889 there were about 225 and the next year about 

 400 experimenters. The work has gradually increased from year to year until 

 this year we have 4,050 farmers upon their own farms carrying on experiments 

 in connection with the station work. 



I remember that we had been engaged in the work about six years when I 

 wrote to a large number of the agricultural experiment station people and many 

 of them thought that there was not much value in cooperative work, that the 

 farmers could not carry on scientific experiments, the results of which would be 

 of general interest. That is true to a certain extent; but, still, what are our 

 agricultural colleges for, and what are our experiment stations for? They are 

 to help the farmers, and anything we can do, whether through our colleges or 

 through the experiment stations, that will assist the farmers, I think, is the 

 line of work we should take up. 



We have been following this work for some eighteen years in Ontario, and 

 not only have we studied the results of the experiments, but have also studied 

 the men themselves, as well as the crops with which they have been carrying on 

 the experiments. And we have now a considerable number of men who have 

 been carrying on experiments for five, six, seven, ten, and even a dozen years, 

 on their own farms, and they are thoroughly trained in this work ; and I 

 believe I am safe in saying that there has been no feature of the work that is 

 particularly the station work and the college work, more in touch with the 

 farmers. We now have experiments in agriculture, in horticulture, in live stock, 

 in poultry raising, in forestry, and also in other lines. In agriculture alone we 

 now have over 4,000 experimenters. During this last year we had thirty-five 

 distinct experiments, covering nearly the whole field of agriculture. Do we 

 realize the great importance of the farm crops of our two great countries? 



I do not know the exact average market value of the farm crops of the 

 United States, but it must be an immense amount, for in the Province of 

 Ontario the market value of the farm crops now amounts to about .$150,000,000 

 a year. You see how important it is that the experiment station should be 

 brought in close touch with the farm. We carefully study the work of our 

 experiment station and then arrange 35 experiments in agriculture, and have 

 4,000 farmers cooperate with us in making a practical application of this 

 work on their own farms. We find It brings them in touch with the most im- 

 portant results of the experiment station work in an admirable way. Besides 

 being interested in the cooperative work, they also become interested in the 

 other work of the experiment station. What is the result? Not from the 

 cooperative work alone, but from the farmers' institute and the agricultural 

 college, from the experiment station and from the cooperative work all com- 

 bined, we fiud that there is an entirely different feeling in connection with the 

 college work and the station work now from what there was a few years ago. 

 I'erhaps this is one of the reasons why there will be some 35,000 farmers 

 within the month of June who will get up in the early mornings and drive 5 or 

 miles and take the train and come .50 or 100 or 150 miles to the college and 

 go out to the experiment plats, for an hour and a half in the burning sun, as 

 they do each year. They are intensely interested, as shown by the questions they 

 ask, and we have a splendid time together. They take up the questions that 

 they liave to deal with every day. They take up those practical questions 

 that they are interested in in their everyday work on the farm. It may be such 



