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Rtration plats; and I helieve that as the result of that little farm there will 

 lie many thousands of acres of alfalfa sown in that neighborhood. The danger 

 is that we may overencourage the industry. That is a single-crop country, 

 and whenever the farmers cut loose from cotton the tendency always is for 

 them to rush pellmell into something else and to overdo it. I am using this 

 as an illustration of the value of a means of getting our illustrations before 

 the farmer. What did we do on that farm? Professor Duggar and Professor 

 Kicheson — the farm is located right by the side of the Canebrake Experiment 

 Station — had shown previously that alfalfa would grow on that black waxy 

 soil beautifully. We just went outside of the exi)eriment station fence to 

 show the farmer how to make money out of the experiment, and although 

 they had been watching that alfalfa grow there for a long time it was only 

 after we had demonstrated that there was money in alfalfa, and showed them 

 how to get it out, that they did anything with it themselves. Now thousands of 

 acres of alfalfa are being sown. That Is only one illustration. I could give 

 you others. I believe in this demonstration work. It is the work that is to fill 

 the gup that exists in our methods of investigation and dissemination of 

 knowledge. 



C. D. Smith. Do not let us forget the newspapers as a means of dissemina- 

 tion. If I were asked to name the force in Michigan that is ahead of all others, 

 I would hesitate to name any other influence before that of the rural press ; 

 and the cordial relation between the press and the station has doubled the effi- 

 ciency of our work. 



H. P. Armsby, of Pennsylvania. As I have listened to this extremely inter- 

 esting and stimulating discussion I have been thinking of a matter which is 

 perhaps a little aside from that which we have been considering, and yet is 

 suggested by this : In a certain old book which we sometimes read it is 

 written, " Woe unto you when all men speak well of yon." Seriously, I think I 

 can see a somewhat serious danger before our experiment stations on that line. 

 Some of us know. If we only know by i-eading, something of the expectations 

 that were formed when these institutions were first founded, back in the sixties, 

 and we know something, also, of the disappointment which those expectations 

 met with and of the sort of " middle ages " which ensued, when the agricultural 

 colleges were in a good deal of disrepute, when they lost the confidence of the 

 farmer, very largely because he had been led to form exaggerated expectations 

 of what they could do for him. Now, the experiment stations have been grad- 

 ually building up and securing the confidence of the farmers of the country, and 

 I fear we are coming now into much the same position as the colleges were in 

 originally, where the farmers expect almost everything of the station, and I 

 think perhaps some of our friends have been a little injudicious in what they 

 liave said about the station ; I think perhaps they have exaggerated what the 

 stations have accomplished. They say that the stations are digging out the 

 fundamental princijiles of agricultural science and building up materials for the 

 instruction of the colleges ; and so they are. But it is easy, I think, to exag- 

 gerate the actual contribution that the agricultural experiment stations have 

 made thus far to agricultural science. I do not mean to belittle it. but it is 

 ea.sy to exaggerate it and its influence on the farmers of the country. I do not 

 mean by this to throw cold water on this investigation work or demonstration 

 work ; but I think we should bear this in mind, that we should not lead the 

 farmer to expect that the agricultural millenium is coming in the near future, 

 or has come. That we should be careful not to foster in the mind of the farmer 

 the idea that the agricultural experiment station and college are the two 

 crutches on which he is to make jirogress through the world. The one thing, it 

 seems to me, which the experiment station and the agricultural college call 



