404 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



these respects our station work in some instances leaves opportunity 

 for improvement, and the administrative management lacks the 

 strength which the present magnitude of the enterprise calls for. 



In his recent presidential address before the agricultural section of 

 the British Association, Prof. T. B. Wood, of the University of Cam- 

 bridge, voiced many of the views which have often been urged in this 

 country as to the basis of progress in agricultural investigation and 

 its application. His address dealt in a general way with the result 

 of the last twenty years, discussing both successes and failures as a 

 guide to the future. 



Considering the common field and plat experiments. Professor 

 Wood argued for more painstaking methods, to reduce the probable 

 error and make the practical recommendations more reliable and safe. 

 In this country we have recognized the necessity of this, have bent 

 our energies toward safeguarding the results of this type of experi- 

 menting, and as time has gone by have realized more and more its 

 limitations. The safe interpretation of results is the crucial point in 

 experimental work, and this refers back to the manner in which the 

 results were obtained. Unless the conditions of the experiment are 

 known and the variable factors controlled or checked, there can be no 

 safe tracing of relationship between cause and effect. 



Although the number of plats has been multiplied and various 

 checks provided, many of our field experiments are still crude and far 

 from giving results of scientific accuracy. They have served to fur- 

 nish indications of practical importance, but after twenty-five years 

 of experimenting, which has been so largely on a practical basis, it 

 would seem that many of the practical and commercial aspects of 

 such questions as varieties, culture, feeding, etc., should have received 

 sufficient attention for the present, or at least have indicated the 

 inability of the methods used to settle these questions with a degree 

 of finality and understanding. 



Our experimental work has been quite largely the development of 

 facts and the attempt to interpret these in action — in rules or theories 

 largely of empirical nature. To make this work virile and give it 

 the force of understanding requires a deeper insight than is usually 

 had into the meaning of the facts, the reasons for them, their limita- 

 tions, and their consequences. It is far easier to develop a body of 

 facts than it is to evolve from those facts a few deductions that are 

 scientifically sound and explained in their relationships and conse- 

 quences. The latter gives us a working knowledge upon which other 

 knowledge can be built. In this way human intelligence is broadened, 

 since " to know a thing and know you know it, that is knowledge " ; 

 and this intelligence bom of understanding gives power in dealing 

 with the composite phenomena surrounding agricultural operations. 



