104 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



It may be profitable at this time to examine the nature and extent 

 of the station work in relation to the basis it furnishes for extension 

 teaching and for a more rational agriculture. This may develop the 

 wide range to which the results are applicable at the present stage, 

 and likewise disclose weak points and phases which should receive 

 sound and more exhaustive study. Manifestly, a comprehensive or 

 detailed review is not possible here, but the bare enumeration of some 

 of the salient lines may suggest the broad and substantial nature of 

 this basis, and also indicate the wa vs in which the course of investiga- 

 tion has changed as a result of the clearer insight which its progress 

 has furnished. 



Such a review and critical self-examination would be profitable 

 for every station. It would help to emphasize and demonstrate the 

 future need for funds and opportunity. 



It was necessary at the outset for the experiment stations to estab- 

 lish the data of agricultural science through their own studies and the 

 accumulation of the sciences. The materials with which they work 

 had to be studied in order that they might be more accurately defined. 

 The tools of science and the methods of investigation required con- 

 siderable adaptation and refinement. We find, therefore, throughout 

 the station literature a very large amount of analytical work, done to 

 get at the composition of a great variety of materials, old and new, 

 which are products of or employed in agi-iculture. A broad back- 

 ground of such data is now available, which has been simimarized or 

 made readily accessible so that new analyses are only needed for 

 special purposes and not to meet the usual inquiries of the piiblic. 



The knowledge of the composition and digestibility of feeding 

 stuffs was further increased by careful studies of these materials in 

 the bomb calorimeter, to determine their fuel or energy value, and 

 with man and animal subjects in the respiration calorimeter to de- 

 termine their physiological value. The tendency in these investiga- 

 tions, as throughout the whole field of agricultural research, has 

 been to reduce the problem to simpler terms, to eliminate the inci- 

 dental factors, so that the whole matter may be stated so far as pos- 

 sible in terms of chemistry and physics. This clearing away of the 

 imessentials and focusing of the attention upon the fundamental 

 features of each problem has prepared the way to the control of 

 natural forces through an understanding of their values and inter- 

 actions. 



Similarly, the experiment station work in the field of botany be- 

 gan with the collection of plants, their classification, the publication 

 of floras, the making of surveys for special purposes, studies of 

 ecology, and attention to special groups, such as honey, medicinal, 

 and poisonous plants. Later more attention was given to the study 



