1040 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



to experts, who will act in collaboration with the committee. Definite 

 requests will he made of individual institutions for contributions in 

 their respective specialties. 



The exhibit at St. Louis will difi'er in some respects from any pre- 

 vious exhibit which our colleges and stations have made. The first 

 undertakinjj- of the kind was at Chicago ten years ago on a consider- 

 ably smaller space. At that time the whole exhibit was placed in the 

 agricultural building. The much smaller exhibits which have been 

 since made at Bufi'alo, Paris, and Charleston have related very largel}^ 

 to the experiment station work, and have likewise been classed with 

 the agricultural exhibits. The change of location to the education 

 building therefore makes a new departure, the reasons for which may 

 not at once be patent. 



There can be little question regarding the desirability of classifying 

 that portion of the exhibit relating to the land-grant colleges in the 

 education building. The stations are legally, and actually for the 

 most part, departments of these colleges; and, furthermore, the 

 experiment station exhibits of the foreign countries will l)e made in 

 the education building in connection with their educational exhibits. 



But there is still another reason. While the work of the experi- 

 ment station touches agricultural practice on the one hand, and this 

 relationship has been most often emphasized, it also touches agri- 

 cultural education on the other. It has been referred to as consti- 

 tuting the capstone of agricultural education, and it quite as truly 

 furnishes the foundation for it. Indeed it is on its educational side that 

 the experiment station movement is destined to exert its most profound 

 and permanent influence; for the investigations and experiments of 

 the stations not only provide much material for efl'ective courses of 

 instruction in the theory and art of agriculture, l)ut they also furnish 

 to the farmer the hitherto lacking motive for definite technical educa- 

 tion along the lines of his art. This is changing the intellectual attitude 

 of the farmer from conservatism to progressiveness. 



The experiment station work in its practical application has already 

 won its way with the farmers of the country, and its utility needs no 

 further demonstration or advertising. But there has been a desire on 

 the part of many to bring out its broader relations and its position in 

 the Avhole system of agricultural education, which is not so generally 

 realized and appreciated. The St. Louis Exposition has been thought 

 to furnish a good opportunity for enforcing this conception of the 

 stations. The leading purpose of the whole exhibit is to show the 

 strong place which the land-grant colleges and the experiment stations 

 have taken in our educational system. If it can once be made clear 

 and apparent that agriculture has a pedagogic form, then educators 



