8 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.40 



to. Pork production constitutes more than half of all the meat pro- 

 duction in the United States, and such large increases were made that 

 the emergency was fully met, the export of pork products being 

 nearly doubled. This again is an indirect result of investigation 

 which has in many respects revolutionized the practice of hog raising. 



There is hardly a phase of pork production that has not been sub- 

 jected to extensive and long continued experiments covering the type 

 of hog, the value of different feeds, the place of supplements in ad- 

 dition to corn, the use of hog pastures to supply a succession of 

 feed, the size at which the pig should be profitably marketed, and 

 many other practical and economic points. Disease had become the 

 great bane of hog production on a large scale, but the long and 

 searching investigations, resulting in successful methods of inocula- 

 tion, enabled extensive campaigns to be conducted in the interest of 

 greater security. The organization and instruction of pig clubs was 

 one of the means for extending pork production, and in these clubs 

 the fund of information resulting frqm experiment found especially 

 wide application. 



No new crop or line of production can be suggested for a locality 

 without at once raising the questions of how and when and why. In 

 such cases t lie influence of experimental inquiry stands out with 

 special clarity. This is illustrated by the case of the grain sorghum-. 

 soy bean, velvet bean, peanuts, and many other crops. 



The spread of the grain sorghums in the regions to which they 

 are particularly adapted is a direct result of years of experiment in 

 which different kinds were tested as to their adaptation to localities, 

 were improved as to yield, drought resistance and other qualities, 

 their culture studied, their feeding value determined and their utiliza- 

 tion as food developed. They are not native but are introduced 

 species, and without this background of experiment there is little 

 reason to believe that farmers or seedsmen would have introduced 

 them and given them an important place in the agriculture of large 

 regions; and without this fund of information on which to rest their 

 teachings the extension forces would not have had the basis for ad- 

 vising their wider culture. The same is true of the other crops men- 

 tioned, which have long been the subject of extensive experiments and 

 have become features of cropping and feeding systems. 



The first silos for experimental purposes in this country were con- 

 structed in 1881, soon after the idea was introduced. From this be- 

 ginning followed an uninterrupted chain of experiments and inten- 

 sive investigations which have resulted in the development of an 

 intelligent system of preserving and using green feeds, now a factor 

 of vast importance in American agriculture. Throughout this de- 

 velopment the American stations have led the way, concerning them- 



