606 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



nesses and limitations of methods, which continued repetition and 

 study from the same point of view serve mainly to confirm. 



Not all topics which it is desirable to know about are profitable 

 ones for study at the present time. The element of uncertainty is 

 too great; they wait on further advancement in the field of general 

 science. How futile it now seems to have experimented on the 

 control of a plant disease until we knew something of the history, 

 habits, and manifestations of the organisms causing it. It was like 

 prescribing remedies in human medicine before the real nature of the 

 disease was known. In much the same way some of our work at present 

 attempts to attack complex problems too directly. It seems unprom- 

 ising, for example, to attempt a direct study of the effect of a course 

 of soil treatment on the fertility of the soil until we can measure 

 more accurately the different elements that go to constitute fertility 

 and correlate them so as to trace a direct relation between the treat- 

 ment and the complicated nature of the manifestation. It is obvious 

 that in agricultural investigation, as in all kinds of research, the 

 scientist should not compare effects without studjang causes or enlarge 

 upon results without examining their origin and source. 



Our knowledge and our ability to conduct profitable researches go 

 forward step by step, and agricultural research is so dependent on 

 the advance of general science that it can rarely do more than keep 

 pace with it. AVe should not, therefore, take unnecessary and unrea- 

 sonable risk in selecting topics for study. This does not mean that 

 the easy things should be selected, but those whose profitable study is 

 practicable — the things it is feasible to do or which give promise of 

 being solved. Such a selection implies close critical study of the 

 station's program of work. 



The element of chance may be increased by the way in which the 

 station program is made up. It seems at times to be itself something of 

 a matter of chance. It lacks evidence of system or a general plan. It 

 skips from one thing to another without continuity or visible con- 

 necting link. The work in one department does not supplement that 

 in another, much as the need for it may be. The program as a whole 

 is to some extent a chance combination, growing out of contingency 

 and of what the members of the staff, acting and thinking inde- 

 pendently, decide they would like to take up. In other words, there 

 is a suggestion of lack of coordination. 



The station program oiight not to be a heterogeneous admixture 

 of independent, unrelated lines of work, without system or plan, but 

 it ought to have regard to the efficiency of the station as a whole and 

 to both the needs of agriculture in the State and the needs of agri- 

 cultural science as a means of advancement. 



