240 REPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



branch of human learning. This code, we take it, is briefly compre- 

 hended in a few principles, among which are absolute adherence to 

 truth as each man sees it, perfect freedom of opinion and utterance 

 within the bounds of decency and common sense, and individual 

 responsibility and credit for whatever of new thought each man can 

 justly claim as his own. Within these limits we care not how many 

 different or apparently conflicting theories or interpretations of fact 

 may be offered here. In the arena of debate there is to be a free field 

 and no favor. We hope the intellectual tilting here will be as serious 

 and earnest as were the combats of mailed horsemen in the days when 

 "knighthood was in flower" and men's lives were at hazard in the 

 tournaments. But afterwards may there be a real truce of God, with 

 Truth in full possession of the field. 



The time is too short to expect systematic courses of instruction, 

 but there should be opportunity for the discussion of many points 

 along advanced lines where there is yet room for more than one con- 

 clusion, the suggestion of new problems for investigation, the reveal- 

 ing of better methods of research and instruction. We shall hope to 

 consider also to a certain extent some of the broader problems con- 

 nected with the .more definite formulation of a science of agriculture 

 and the more effective organization of an American system of agri- 

 cultural education and research. 



In taking up the work of this session of the Graduate School of 

 Agriculture it is well for us briefly to review the past and to consider 

 the present status of the movement for agricultural education in this 

 country. Our agricultural colleges have already begun to celebrate 

 their semicentennials, though it will not be until next year that the 

 first one actually to open its doors to students — the Michigan Agri- 

 cultural College — will have rounded out a full fifty years of operation. 

 Much time was spent in getting these institutions into effective run- 

 ning order, and for many years agricidtural instruction went little 

 further than the teaching of the sciences related to agriculture. 

 Then came the establishment of the agricultural experiment stations 

 as departments of these colleges, and for more than a decade the 

 chief emphasis was laid on the work of the stations as discoverers of 

 new knowledge and purveyors of information to the farmers. 



Thus it came about that the twentieth century opened before the 

 agricultural colleges realized in any broad way that there was a real 

 science of agriculture on which could be based a comprehensive sj'stem 

 of agricultural education and research. Only a few of our colleges 

 had opened their eyes to the fact that largely through the work of the 

 experiment stations and the Department of Agriculture a new science 

 had been created when the first session of the graduate school was 

 opened in 1902. The movement for the reorganization of these col- 

 leges on the basis of agriculture itself had only begun. The professor 



