EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. 38. May, 1918. No. 7. 



The employment of experiment stations as a ^asis for the sound 

 development of agriculture has been a characteristic feature in the 

 administration of the territorial possessions of the United States 

 and has constituted one of the important forms of aid rendered to 

 these dependencies. One by one these regions have been provided 

 with stations, usually equipped and maintained chiefly by Federal 

 appropriations, until an interesting and in some respects novel group 

 has been developed. 



Some of the noteworthy features of the stations in these insular 

 possessions were outlined in these pages about ten years ago, at the 

 time of the establishment of the station in the Island of Guam. The 

 interval has been one of steady development, and the group is now to 

 be extended by the addition of a station for the Virgin Islands. 



The oldest of this group of stations is that located at Sitka, 

 Alaska, which was established in 1898, after a preliminary survey of 

 conditions and agricultural features of the coast country. The sta- 

 tions in Hawaii and Porto Rico followed in 1901, and the Guam 

 Station was opened in 1908 as mentioned above. They thus represent 

 widely separated geographical areas, which mark the extremes in 

 territorial expanse of the country with tiie exception of the Philip- 

 pine Islands, and climatic conditions are presented ranging from the 

 arctic zone to the tropics, with scarcely less radical differences in 

 many other respects. 



The administration of this group of stations, it will be recalled, 

 differs materially from that of the experiment stations within the 

 States. They receive no funds under the Hatch and Adams acts, nor 

 are they directly connected with the agricultural colleges which have 

 been provided under the Morrill fund in Hawaii and Porto Rico. 

 They are maintained from specific annual appropriations carried in 

 the appropriation act for the Department, and they are Federal sta- 

 tions supported almost exclusively by congressional appropriations, 

 with no regular aid from the local governments. Originally estab- 

 lished by the Department under the direct supervision of the Office of 

 Experiment Stations, they are still administered through a division of 

 insular stations of this Office as a part of the States Relations 



Service. 



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