EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. XXVI. June, 1912. No. 8. 



The annual meeting of the Southern Commercial Congress re- 

 cently held at Nashville, Tenn,, was devoted to the presentation of 

 facts showing the educational and agricultural recovery of the 

 South during the past half century, and the discussion of measures 

 for the further advancement of this great region along these lines. 

 A considerable number of officers of this Department and of the 

 agricultural colleges and experiment stations in the Southern States 

 took part in this Congress. Conferences were held on soils, forage 

 and horticultural plants, forestry, animal husbandry, drainage, 

 roads, cooperative marketing, etc. Special interest was manifested 

 in two conferences on extension teaching in agriculture, at which 

 the attendance w^as relatively large and the discussion relatively 

 broad. 



The wide scope of extension work in agriculture already inaugu- 

 rated in the South was illustrated and enforced at the opening of 

 the first conference by President Soule of the Georgia College of 

 Agriculture. He displayed an attractive series of charts showing 

 how different agricultural problems and interests of Georgia were 

 being taken up by the extension force of the college, partly in co- 

 operation with this Department. The lines of work included farm- 

 ers' institutes, movable schools, field demonstrations, special railroad 

 trains, eradication of the cattle tick, boys' and girls' clubs, coopera- 

 tion with the district agricultural high schools, etc. 



The sympathy and support which extension work in agriculture 

 is now receiving from educational leaders in the South were shown 

 by the attendance and addresses of Chancellor Barrow of the Uni- 

 versity of Georgia, President Thach of the Alabama Polytechnic 

 Institute, and President Hardy of the Mississippi Agricultural Col- 

 lege. In order to come to this meeting, Director Dodson of the 

 Louisiana Experiment Stations, and Professor Bryant of the Ken- 

 tucky College of Agriculture, had left special railroad trains which 

 were carrying agricultural information to multitudes of farmers in 

 their respective States. Their interesting accounts of the success 

 of these trains and the special means taken to make them effective 



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