406 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



crojD production, animal nutrition, dairying, etc., which calls for 

 specialists who are not confined to the limits 'of a single science, and 

 which has developed special methods of investigation. 



If the divisions of science were strictly adhered to we should have 

 no such thing as agricultural science, no systematic attempt to bring 

 together and classify scientific knowledge in its relations to agri- 

 culture, and no scientific basis for agricultural instruction. The 

 composite character of agricultural chemistry and its special point 

 of view are the very traits which give it its great usefulness and 

 make its continued recognition extremely desirable from the stand- 

 point of both instruction and investigation. It has blocked out a 

 special field, which with the further classification of agriculture will 

 doubtless need to be more carefully defined but not eliminated. 



The classification of agriculture is no easy task, but it is not to 

 be accomplished by reverting to the basis of the primary sciences. 

 This much, Ave have learned from the experience of the past. Any 

 system Avhich refers the instruction in agriculture to the depart- 

 ments of pure science, even Avith agricidtural specialists in those 

 departments, will fail of efficiency on account of the restricted scope 

 and the special view point imposed by the individual departments. 

 The facts of pure science and the conditions of agricultural practice 

 must be brought together and harmonized. This can not be left to 

 the agricultural student or to the educated fittmer. 



The present-day plan for the classification of agricultural knowl- 

 edge and its formulation into courses of instruction has cut loose 

 entirely from the old academic idea. It is based on the application 

 of this knowledge in the natural divisions of agi'iculture, rather than 

 on its scientific origin. In a large measure it obliterates for its pur- 

 pose the boundary lines of pure science. We have long since ceased 

 to teach the subject of soils under the head of geology, and are be- 

 ginning to group the teaching of the theor}' and practice of crop 

 production into a department of agronomy. This seems to be a 

 fairly logical and workable basis for the arrangement of teaching 

 courses, and a proposal to return to the former basis of the ])rimary 

 sciences would find scant indorsement among men Avho have studied 

 the pedagogics of agricidture. It would seem, moreover, to have 

 little support in the courses pursued in other special branches of 

 education. 



