406 EXPKRIMENT STATION RECOKD. 



guarded. Unless the findings are accurate and represent the truth as 

 far as they go, they are of little practical or theoretical value but are 

 rather a stumbling block at a stage when mistakes are less excusable 

 than formerly. Unless our work can be progressive in method and in 

 kind it becomes itself a just and valid criticism of our institutions. 



No work is of more practical or intrinsic value than that based on 

 research related to practical agricultural questions. The difference 

 between research and the simpler forms of experimenting is one of 

 method and aim, and not one of subject. The immediate relation of 

 research to practice is limited only by the skill and success of the 

 investigator. If the experiment stops with ascertaining merely the 

 empirical fact and without an attempt to work out the reason on 

 which these facts rest or their limitations, it can not be regarded as a 

 very high type of experiment and can not broaden human intelli- 

 gence, which after all is the ultimate object of all our agricultural 

 experimenting and investigating. There are distinct limits to the 

 working out of rules for practice, to be followed unthinkingly and 

 without consideration of many conditions. The broader understand- 

 ing essential to intelligent management must rest on well-considered 

 and well-directed research, which goes beyond the realm of human 

 experience and attempts to add something new or a link m a chain 

 of evidence or a new point of view. 



The essentials of research were recently outlined in an address by . 

 Prof. E.. D. Carmichael, published in Science.^'^ in a manner which 

 helps to clarify this subject. " True research," he says, " consists in 

 any one or more of three kinds of work of equal rank, as follows : 



" 1. Ascertaining new^ facts of a permanent character or drawing 

 attention to new relations among facts already known. This requires 

 the power to direct attention to things which other people have over- 

 looked, to separate them from the mass of facts in which they are 

 imbedded, and to study them first for their own sake and then in 

 relation to other things. . . . 



" 2. Deriving the consequences of facts already known. No fact 

 is thoroughly understood until all its consequences are brought into 

 review or the possibility of doing this has been clearly and definitely 

 recognized. Indeed it is only when this has been done that we can 

 be said to have ascertained that the thing is a fact. 



" 3. Developing a body of theoretical doctrine, with or without 

 reference to facts to be accounted for by it. Under this head come 

 such matters as the Mendelian theory of inheritance, the electron 

 theory, the mathematical theory of electricity, projective geometry." 



As to the subject matter, he says : " Out of the myriads of facts in 

 the universe selection must be made. Some are irrelevant ; and these 

 should be discarded. To determine the number of sprigs of grass on 



•Science, n. ser., 37 (1913), No. 959, pp. 738-743. 



