AGRICULTURAL INVESTIGATION IN SWITZERLAND. 683 



and wine and must improvement. Tlie reports of tlie station appear 

 in the Sweizerischc Zcitschrift filr Obst- und Weinbaii, which, under the 

 name of Monatsschri/t filr Obst- unci Weinbau, was for twenty- five years 

 the organ of the Swiss Fruit and Wine Culture Association. 



A few years since an ex])eriment garden for demonstration was 

 acquired by the teachers of fruit and wine culture in tlie agricultural 

 school of the Polytechnic Institute of Zurich, and the professor of 

 agriculture has been provided with an experimental field at Strickhof, 

 near Zurich. 



The great development which the fertilizer industry has lately made 

 in Switzerland has been accomi^anied by a similar expansion of oflicial 

 control. Prior to 1878 many domestic factories of artificial manures 

 existed, and foreign firms shipped their i)roducb into Switzerland, but 

 nowhere was there any control of their production, or, at least, only so 

 far as individuals saw fit to have tests made at their own expense. It 

 was, therefore, a step in the right direction when the so-called ware- 

 house control was established. Under this system a chemist of the 

 Polytechnic Institute undertook a partial insxiection of fertilizers in the 

 factories whose proprietors would consent to the investigation, and 

 these results were made public. It is evident, however, that such a 

 control offered no security to the purchaser, for the product found in 

 the warehouse could be subjected to many changes before being sold 

 to the farmer. 



It was, therefore, a decided advance when in 1878 a federal agri- 

 cultural control station for fertilizers and feeding stuffs, and a seed 

 control station under separate direction, were established by the gov- 

 ernment, and authorized to arrange with the interested firms a system 

 of control by which the farmer obtained the advantage of a free exami- 

 nation of the purchased goods. To these federal stations two cantonal 

 stations have been added, an experiment farm at the Agricultural Insti- 

 tute at Lausanne, and a station at liiiti near Bern, cooperating with 

 the Chemical Experiment Station of Bern (Prof. Dr. Eossel, director). 

 The latter had been organized the previous year and is confined to the 

 Canton of Bern and the surrounding country, while the federal insti- 

 tution extends its work over all the cantons of Switzerland, including 

 Bern. Eecently the work of the station has been extended to include 

 especially culture tests of soils, and for this purpose an experiment 

 garden with greenhouses adapted to pot culture has been provided. 



The Federal Seed Control Station and the Agricultural Experiment 

 Station of Zurich were established by a resolution of the federal council 

 of Mar(?h 17, 1877, at the federal Polytechnic Institute at Zurich. They 

 were placed under the supervision of the Swiss school council, which, 

 since 1885, has exercised its control through a sux^ervisory commission. 

 The management of each of these stations is intrusted to a director 

 chosen by the federal council, who, with his assistants, transacts the 

 current business. 



