RELATIONS WITH THE EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 17 



needs and requirements of American agriculture as related to the 

 work of agricultural experiment stations, whose work shall rest on 

 a firm basis of scientific principles and their application to practical 

 ends. 



This Office has continued to make careful inquiry regarding the 

 use made by the stations of the funds granted to them imder the 

 Hatch Act, and to aid them in securing liberal State and local appro- 

 priations for cooperative and other experiments in different locali- 

 ties, for publishing the results of their work, and for such practical 

 tests and demonstrations as will best show how the results of agri- 

 cultural research may be applied in a broad way for the improve- 

 ment of agricultural practice. The States and local communities 

 have of late shown a most encouraging disposition to give the 

 stations such financial support as they require to make the results 

 of their work broadly effective, and it is believed that this will con- 

 tinue to be done wherever the station manaijers show themselves 

 alert to the best interests of agriculture and worthy of the confidence 

 and support of practical men. 



The steady growth of institutions for agricultural experimenta- 

 tion throughout the world is reflected in the enlarged business of this 

 (3ffice in its relations with the foreign stations. There are now more 

 than 1,000 institutions in over fifty countries which are engaged in 

 investigations bearing directly on agricultural problems. Friendly 

 and helpful intercourse between these institutions wherever located 

 is growijig in importance and usefulness. This Office is coming into 

 closer touch with the foreign stations, is getting more regular and 

 complete accounts of their work, and is publishing an increasing 

 amoiHit of information from these sources which is useful to our 

 investigators, teachers, and farmers. 



The broadened scope and extent of the work of institutions for 

 agricultural investigation at home and abroad is shown in the con- 

 stantly increasing mass and variety of the literature reviewed in the 

 Experiment Station Record. The seventeenth volume of the Record 

 was completed during the past year and, as heretofore, included ab- 

 stracts of the publications of the agricultural experiment stations 

 in the United States, the United States Department of Agriculture. 

 the researches of experiment stations and similar institutions in all 

 parts of the world, and a large number of articles having a direct 

 bearing upon agricultural science which are published in the scien- 

 tific journals at home and abroad. It has thoroughly maintained 

 its well-established character of a world review of agricultural ex- 

 perimentation, and it remains the only journal of the kind published 

 under governmental or private auspices. The careful discrimination 

 necessar}^ to the collation of such an abstract journal has been exer- 



294b— 07 2 



