402 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



means of presenting station work needs to be carefully considered. 

 Some stations have already modified their plan of publication ; others 

 have not. 



The stations need to continue to maintain their own series of publi- 

 cations for presenting the results of their work to the agricultural 

 public in a form which will be readable and easily understood. This 

 definite end will naturally influence the character of the station 

 bulletins. There is otherwise some danger that the station publica- 

 tions may become too exclusively technical. In that case their work 

 would not reach the people directly as it has in the past, but would 

 be filtered down to them through the extension service. The stations 

 might thus lose to some extent in closeness of contact with the public 

 and possibly in credit for their work. This would be unfortunate, 

 since their prestige and their recog-nition as the source of reliable 

 tested information must, of course, be maintained. 



In addition to the dissemination of the practical results of station 

 work among the agricultural public, the station publications have 

 another important function. This is to record the more technical 

 scientific results of their investigations for the benefit of other in- 

 vestigators and for the general advancement of agricultural science. 

 It is naturally desirable that accounts of this work be placed where 

 they will reach the special audience interested in them, and will be as 

 permanent and accessible as reports of investigation in any other 

 branch of science. They represent contributions to science and they 

 deserve a place alongside similar contributions from other institu- 

 tions. This is due the station as a scientific institution and the 

 author as a scientific investigator. The ultimate purpose or appli- 

 cation of the work need not alter the case. 



It has come to be quite generally recognized that the regular bul- 

 letin series is not the best place for recording such features of station 

 work in detail. To an increasing extent this material is being placed 

 in the current scientific journals, and in a considerable number of 

 cases a separate series of research or technical bulletins has been 

 provided to which special distribution is given. The latter plan has 

 numerous advantages. It avoids the commingling of the technical 

 and the more popular material in the same series, and makes it pos- 

 sible to distribute each class appropriately. The main question 

 appears to turn on its effectiveness and permanence as a means of 

 publicity. Where the station output of technical material is con- 

 fined to one or two bulletins a year, and these published at irregular 

 intervals, they become more or less isolated and are correspondingly 

 more liable to be overlooked by the scientific world. 



Within the past year, a new medium of publication has been 

 opened to the stations in the Journal of Agnculturol Research. This 



