EDITORIAL. 503 



with the farmers, and obscure the importance and vahie of station 

 ■work as rehited to the agricidtural industry. This, however, need 

 not be the case if the extension departments are properly organized 

 and manned. The scheme of organization shoukl inchide the giving 

 of opportunities to station men to attend meetings of farmers from 

 time to time to present the results of station work, and the giving of 

 credit to the stations for whatever information received from them 

 is incorporated in extension publications. The station should not 

 in any case be deprived of the privilege of issuing popular accounts 

 of the results of its experimental work as station publications. 



The college authorities should take special pains to explain and 

 reiterate to the public that the station is the source of new knowledge, 

 while the extension department is an agency for disseminating infor- 

 mation. It will doubtless take considerable time to impress this dis- 

 tinction on the mind of a public which is just beginning to appreciate 

 the difi'erence between the educational work of the college and the 

 experimental work of the station. In the end, however, this distinc- 

 tion will be apparent to every intelligent person, and then the position 

 of the stations as research institutions will be stronger and more 

 satisfactor}^ than at present, or than it can ever be while they are 

 performing such miscellaneous functions as they now do in most 

 cases. 



Once relieved of compiling publications and a vast miscellaneous 

 correspondence, the stations can devote themselves to experimental 

 work with renewed enthusiasm, and under such circumstances it is 

 I'easonable to expect that they will have so much greater success in 

 obtaining new knowledge that they will be able to impress themselves 

 much more strongly on both scientific and practical men as the foun- 

 tain heads of agricultural advancement. At the same time the exten- 

 sion departments will spread much more widely the practical results 

 of the work of the stations and other agencies, create and satisfy a 

 wider demand for information of immediately practical usefulness, 

 and drive home the necessity and advantage of improved agricultural 

 methods to the multitudes of farmers who now are indifferent or 

 unwilling to depart from traditional routine. 



Together the stations and the extension departments will supply 

 the material for stronger courses of instruction and the incentive for 

 enterprising yomig people to make a thorough study of agriculture, 

 with the result that our agricultural colleges and schools will be 

 flooded with students. Thus we shall have a broader and stronger 

 American system of agricultural education and research. The time 

 has come for differentiation of function and organization along the 

 three 'great lines of experimental inquiry, interior instruction, and 

 exterior dissemination of information. The sooner and more com- 



