106 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Ill Porto Rico and Alaska some attention is being given to the in- 

 troduction of live stock with a view to the improvement of that now 

 common. Marked success has been attained with Galloway cattle in 

 Alaska, where they have proved hardy and well adapted to the 

 country. Improved horses, cattle, swine, and fowls have been intro- 

 duced by the Porto Rico Station, and the demand for their progeny 

 greatly exceeds the station's supply. The active interest in animal 

 breeding in Porto Rico is considered a very hopeful sign of appre- 

 ciation of the station's efforts. 



Apart from these specific features of the stations' work, a broader 

 result has been to demonstrate the feasibility of a varied agriculture 

 in an untried field like Alaska, a conclusion of the greatest impor- 

 tance to a permanent population and the development of that terri- 

 tory, and the application of scientific methods to a greater diversity 

 of agricultural production in Hawaii and Porto Rico. The skep- 

 ticism with which these undertakings were looked upon locally has 

 been replaced by a confidence in their possibilities and an appre- 

 ciation of agricultural experimentation, which augur much for the 

 future usefulness of these stations. 



The death of Robert Koch, which took place on May 27 at Baden 

 Baden where he had gone in search of health, removed the second of 

 the two great founders of modern bacteriology and establishers of 

 the germ theory of infectious diseases. Few men accomplish more 

 for a science, for the methods of investigation, and for humanity 

 directly than he did in the sixty-six years of his life. His epoch- 

 making studies, his versatility, and the practical outcome of his work 

 give him a high place in science and among the benefactors of the 

 human race. 



Doctor Koch was born December 11, 1843, in Klausthal, Prussia. 

 He passed through the gymnasium and at the age of nineteen began 

 the study of medicine at the University of Gottingen, graduating in 

 ' 1866. While there he came under the influence of such leaders in 

 science as Friedrich Woehler, the chemist, who first produced urea 

 synthetically, Wagner the physiologist, and Jacob Henle, the great 

 anatomist. 



After serving for a short time as assistant physician in the Gen- 

 eral Hospital at Hamburg, he took up the practice of medicine at 

 Langenhagen in Hanover. At that time he seriously considered 

 coming to the United States, Avhere two of his brothers had already 

 established themselves. Soon afterward he removed to Rackwitz, a 

 small place in Posen, and in 1872 became district physician in Woll- 

 stein. In 1879 he was called to Breslau as a public medico-legal 

 officer, but soon returned to Wollstein, where he remained but a few 

 months before being called, in 1880, to the Imperial Board of Health 

 in Berlin. 



