EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. 1. JANUARY, 1890. No. 3. 



EDITOPvIAL NOTES. 



Tlie following is a brief siiiniiiarv of some statistics of the stations 

 collated for the Annual Report of this Office for 1889. 



Experiment stations have been in operation during 1889 under the 

 act of Congress ai)i)roved March 2, 1887, in all the States except Mon- 

 tana. North Dakota, and Washington. In several States the United 

 States grant is divided, so that fortj^-three stations in thirty-nine 

 States are receiving money from the United States Treasury. In 

 each of the States of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and 

 New York a separate station is maintained entirely or in part by 

 State funds, and in Louisiana a station for sugar experiments is 

 maintained mainly by funds contributed by sugar planters. In 

 many States branch stations or substations have been established. If 

 branch stations or substations be excluded, the number of stations in 

 the United States is forty-six; if they be included, it is sixty-three. 

 These stations with this Office expend in all about $725,000 per annum, 

 of which $()00,000 is appropriated from the National Treasury and 

 $125,000 is received from State governments and other sources. 



The working staffs of the stations may be classified as follows: Di- 

 rectors and vice-directors, G3; chemists, 106; agriculturists, 78; horti- 

 culturists, 40; botanists, 30; entomologists, 29; veterinarians, 19; 

 meteorologists, 10; biologists, 5; viticulturists, 5; physicists, 3; geol- 

 ogists, 3: mycologists, 2; irrigation engineer, 1; in charge of sub- 

 stations. 14: : secretaries and treasurers, 13; clerks, 16; miscellaneous, 

 17: giving a total of 449. Subtracting the number of officers who 

 are entered in two classes, we have 402 as the total number of persons 

 engaged in the work of the stations and of this Office. 



Some idea of the distribution of the work of research among the 

 stations may be gained from the following approximate data, collated 

 chiefly from the station publications for 1888 and 1889. Twenty- 

 seven stations are studying ])r<)blems relating to meteorology and 

 climatic conditions. Thirty-one are studying tlie soil, by investiga- 



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