6 EXPERIMENT STATION EECOED. [Vol. 35 



It is worthy of note that not a single station in the region visited 

 fails to receive some state appropriation for its maintenance, and 

 frequentl}^ the amount is very large. This, it is to be remembered, is 

 in a relatively new section in much of which cultivated agriculture 

 is only partially developed as yet, and where only a few years ago 

 the need for the work of an experiment station was but slightly felt. 

 The eight stations in the section in question are this year devoting 

 a total of considerably more than three-quarters of a million dollars 

 to their work, aside from appropriations for new building— a worthy 

 example for some of the States farther East. 



It is highly gratifying, furthermore, to find the names of the 

 pioneers in agricultural service immortalized in the buildings erected 

 for agriculture, often as stately and imposing as any on the campus, 

 and worthy memorials to those who laid the foundations for the 

 present great deAclopment. It shows that at heart the people are 

 grateful. Confidence in this fact is surely one of the rewards of 

 service, even if evidence of it is sometimes delayed. 



But more remarkable even than physical equipment or than the gen- 

 erous financial support is the impression which the work itself makes 

 upon the visitor in going from station to station. The extent of it 

 and the gi-oat range and variety of it are well-nigh bewildering — 

 from such unusual subjects as the ostrich and the date and the cactus 

 in Arizona, the citrus, avocado, and wine and raisin grapes in Cali- 

 fornia, the range problem in Nevada, the alkali and irrigation 

 studies of other sections, and the problems of dry farming, to the 

 more familiar ones of grain and stock farming in the humid sections. 



Many of the broad general subjects are of course similar all over 

 the country, and fall into certain rather definite classes, but the 

 infinite variations given to common topics in different places by 

 reason of the special conditions of the sections illustrate, as almost 

 nothing else does, the enormous variation in environment and the 

 necessarily local character of many lines of inquiry. It shows that 

 natural laws must be very broad to cover such a range of differences, 

 and that facts and principles assumed to have been established are 

 more restricted than supposed and often require local adaptation. 



These things make the work not only varied but highly special- 

 ized. Fighting drought in one section, overcoming it with irriga- 

 tion in others, and avoiding the effects of too much water elsewhere — 

 each brings its own special group of problems to tax the knowledge 

 and the ingenuity of the most versatile investigator. The difference 

 in the behavior of the same kind of soil in California and in Kan- 

 sas, and the variation in the life history of insects and organisms 

 causing diseases in sections having different climate and season, con- 

 tribute to the almost endless variation in plan and method as well 



