CONVENTION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 437 



work and plans under consideration showed that considerable work in 

 animal breeding has been undertaken, and that the subject is one in 

 which there is much interest. Professor Curtiss expressed the view 

 that the theories and supposed laws of heredity should be tested by 

 extensive and repeated experiments with domestic animals, and that 

 it is desirable to perform this work with the larger rather than the 

 smaller animals, notwithstanding the longer time and greater expendi- 

 ture which will be involved. 



In the conference upon the subject of how much teaching, if any, 

 it is desirable that a station worker should do, there was a lively dis- 

 cussion and a free expression of views, which seemed to be very largely 

 in one direction. In opening the discussion Dr. II. P. Armsby showed 

 that, according to the latest reports of this Office, about 54 per cent 

 of the station workers now do more or less teaching, and that while 

 the proportion differed in different institutions, the tendency seemed 

 to be toward an increase in the number of station men who also teach. 

 He expressed doubt as to the advantage, which is frequently urged, 

 of the station men doing college work, and he was quite emphatic upon 

 the point that while a certain amount of teaching might be advanta- 

 geous "an uncertain amount is not." He believed that in this agricul- 

 tural work a man should be chiefly either a teacher or an investigator, 

 and maintained that the two kinds of work call for a different attitude 

 of mind and the use of a different set of faculties, to a certain extent. 

 He held it to be imperative, if the station enterprise is to reach the 

 highest measure of success, that there should be a reform, and that the 

 tendency should be in the direction of less teaching and a differentia- 

 tion between the station and the school or college of agriculture, in 

 order that the station may be just what the Hatch Act calls for — a 

 department of the college devoted to research. 



Dr. W. H. Jordan made the point that the advantage of teaching 

 to the station man depended quite largely upon the kind of teaching 

 to be done, and stated that most of the teaching at our agricultural 

 colleges was the teaching of fundamentals. He denied that the teach- 

 ing of fundamentals and the drilling of classes for 50 per cent of the 

 time is an advantage to the investigator. He conceded that a small 

 amount of teaching of an advanced character, along specialties with 

 which the station man is dealing, say 10 to 20 lectures a year, might 

 well prove an advantage; but he maintained that "very much of the 

 teaching which we necessarily do in our agricultural colleges to-day is 

 not an advantage but a disadvantage to the investigator. 11 



It developed from the discussion that the plan of requiring this dual 

 service from station men was considered largely one of expediency; 

 and that being the case, it was urged that the teaching should be so 

 arranged on the college schedule as to interfere as little as possible 

 with the time of the station man, and to leave him a part of the year, 



