214 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



kinds. The writer knows the advantages of this from practical expe- 

 rience. The German farmer is by nature distrustful. Although he has 

 the highest respect for a scientific institution, he invariably regards it 

 with a certain distrust and doubts the applicability of the results 

 obtained from experiments at a scientific institution to his own condi- 

 tions. But if he conducts an experiment on his own fields and obtains 

 profitable results, both he and his neighbors are convinced of the cor- 

 rectness of the teachings of science. 



It is, therefore, a highly important function of the experiment stations 

 to organize field experiments, not only for research, but also for purposes 

 of furnishing to the farmer a practical demonstration of the usefulness 

 and benefits of scientific research. 



The director of an experiment station must therefore be in close 

 sympathy with the practice of agriculture. He must be accurately 

 posted as to the methods employed by the farmers of his district and 

 must possess sufficient practical information to be able to test these 

 methods critically. If this practical understanding is lacking, the 

 experiment station will fall far short of the usefulness in promoting 

 agriculture that may reasonably be expected of it. The writer by no 

 means underestimates the value of the work of the experiment stations 

 in the promotion of agricultural science, and believes that he has not 

 been unmindful of his duty in this direction, but the crowning feature 

 of scientific attainments must be the application of these discoveries to 

 practice, and to this end it is absolutely necessary that the practical 

 farmer should be induced to cooperate in the study of questions of 

 manuring, introduction of various kinds of cultivated plants, cultiva- 

 tion of the soil, etc. 



An important means to this end are the lectures and the teaching of 

 the directors of the agricultural experiment stations. The director of 

 a station can not confine his energies to the laboratory and experiment 

 field. He must go out among practical farmers and talk over the 

 live questions of the day with the leading agriculturists, and above 

 all he should attend the meetings of agricultural societies, in which are 

 found large numbers of farmers who are ready and willing to be 

 instructed. Here he must win friends for his experimental work by 

 demonstrating his scientific and practical grasp of the subject. If 

 an experiment station would become popular and win the confidence of 

 the farmers, without which its work is of no real advantage, its officers 

 must be in touch with the practical farmers of the region. 



The effort has been made above to show the manifold duties and the 

 broad field of activity of the agricultural experiment station, and it will 

 be apparent to the reader that the accomplishment of all these require- 

 ments by a single agency is entirely out of the question. Hence, 

 very naturally, a division of work has grown up in Germany, under 

 which different stations, from their special needs and perhaps also 

 from the tastes of their directors, have preferred to apply themselves to 



