EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. IX. No. 7. 



In the preparation of its annual report on the work and expenditures 

 of the agricultural experiment stations tins Office has recently made a 

 review of the station publications received during the fiscal year end- 

 ing June 30, 1897. Excluding annual reports winch are wholly 

 administrative documents containing neither accounts of station work 

 nor practical information based thereon, 335 publications from the sta- 

 tions in the United States came to this Office during the past fiscal 

 year. Of these, 98 were compiled bulletins of information and 47 

 recorded meteorological observations or fertilizer analyses. If we add 

 the bulletins in which small experiments are made a sort of peg on 

 which to hang a large amount of compiled data, it may safely be said 

 that only about one- half of our station publications contain accounts 

 of investigations regularly conducted by the stations with a view to 

 extending the boundaries of our knowledge regarding the science and 

 practice of agriculture. These statistics deserve serious attention 

 chiefly from the fact that it is believed they represent a tendency 

 in the experiment station enterprise in this country which unchecked 

 will lead to very bad results. The rapid expansion of the experiment 

 stations soon after the passage of the Hatch Act ten years ago made it 

 almost necessary that a large amount of compiled information should 

 be published in many States in order to lay the foundation for the 

 intelligent understanding of the original work of the stations as soon 

 as this had reached a state sufficiently advanced to warrant its publi- 

 cation for general distribution to farmers. It was supposed that by 

 the time the new stations were really ready to publish their own work 

 the necessity for compilations would have very largely passed away. 

 But on the contrary the success of the stations has stimulated the 

 demand for practical information, and the stations have increasingly 

 yielded to the temptations to enlarge their popularity by sending out 

 numerous bulletins of information even though these might be pre- 

 pared at the expense of original investigations. So strong has been 

 the influence in this direction that of late it has been seriously argued 

 by some leading station workers that after all it should be the chief 

 business of the stations to give the farmers such information as they 

 need to aid them in improving their practice or defending themselves 



against ills common to their art. 



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