306 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol. 36 



The project system has been extended in large measure to all the 

 activities of the stations, irrespective of the funds from which they 

 are supported. As an administrative measure, it has been found to 

 present many advantages, and where adopted it has met with general 

 satisfaction, as providing a helpful businesslike method of procedure. 



Partly as a result of this plan, more systematic effort is now made 

 to secure progress reports of some sort upon the various features 

 of investigation, and to effect the prompt recording and digestion 

 of the data, either for publication or for safe preservation. Report 

 writing is tedious to many workers, especially those who are crowded 

 with work as most station men are, and there is some tendency to 

 allow data to accumulate in a form subject to loss or which would 

 make them difficult for anyone else to work over. There has been 

 considerable waste from this source in the past, and the effort to 

 bring about more systematic procedure is recognized as an important 

 advance. 



As to the tangible product of the research conducted under the 

 Adams Act, space will permit reference to only a few features. 

 Where the product is so large it is difficult to make selection, and in 

 any attempt at citing examples there is danger of doing injustice 

 or conferring a wrong impression. For, manifestly, some of the most 

 important pieces of investigation have marked significant steps in the 

 progress toward final conclusions, rather than in themselves having 

 a conspicuous practical end; and man}^ things omitted are quite as 

 important as the few mentioned. 



Some of the most significant investigation has been in the field 

 of animal nutrition, of a nature which is to some extent destructive 

 or corrective of former views, but constructive in giving a more 

 accurate insight into the theory of nutrition and the relative value 

 of food constituents. It has been found, contrary to the former 

 belief, that like amounts of food ingredients do not necessarily pro- 

 duce like effects — that there are differences in the constitution of 

 protein from different sources, that not only the kind of protein 

 but the presence of certain amino acids is important, and that ap- 

 parently other constituents, notably in the fat, have a distinct 

 although not yet fully understood relation to growth. 



Similarly, the mineral nutrition of animals is found to be a far 

 more important matter than was formerly suspected ; and much light 

 has been thrown on the use made of food by animals at different 

 ages and on different planes of nutrition. The comparative feeding 

 experiment has been largely replaced, except for economic purposes. 

 An Institute of Animal Nutrition has been established in one of the 

 States, and in uj)wards of a half dozen other States fimdamental 

 feeding investigations have been developed on an extensive scale. 



