EDITORIAL. 708 



The field of agriculture, however, was broad and its needs urgent, and 

 in the attempt to cover it the scope of each man's province was corre- 

 spondingly widened. We thus had at the start such somewhat anom- 

 alous titles for heads of departments as agriculturist and horticul- 

 turist, and a proportionate scarcit}'- of real specialists. 



The station scientist was called upon to do much teaching in the 

 agricultural college, both to four-year students and in short courses. 

 Some effort was made to adjust the demands of his dual functions so 

 that the one would not too greatly interfere with the other, but this 

 was not always arranged primarily from the point of view of the 

 station. As the number of students in the colleges increased, the bur- 

 den of the instruction staff naturally became even heavier, and to the 

 duties of teaching were added those of organizing departments, 

 advising students, and other administrative requirements. 



In order to bring the results of scientific work more speedily before 

 the farmers it was deemed wise to expend some efforts in extension 

 work. The station worker was expected to do more or less speaking 

 at farmers' institutes and similar gatherings, and to prepare popular 

 articles for the farm press, as well as to serve as a sort of consulting 

 expert in answering inquiries for general information and the like. 

 All this still further lessened his opportunity for research. 



Even such time as was available for station work was in great 

 demand for a variety of matters which seemed to require immediate 

 attention in spite of their rather simple and elementary character. 

 Individual farmers proposed problems for which they expected and 

 needed an early solution, and some of these problems seemed to merit 

 immediate study, even though it meant a postponement of more 

 fundamental inquiries. 



Then again, there was only a very limited body of agricultural 

 knowledge in this country, and to meet this deficiency there were 

 borrowed from Europe results which had already been establishe'd by 

 investigators there. Thus, data concerning the nutritive value of 

 feeds and the theoretical nutritive requirements proposed hj Euro- 

 pean investigators were taken almost bodily for application to 

 American conditions, and similar recourse, in the absence of domestic 

 information, was had to European conclusions regarding soil fer- 

 tility, plant physiologj^, and the control of fungus diseases. This 

 was, of course, realized to be merely a makeshift to tide over the 

 interval necessary to complete experiments, but none the less it tended 

 to create the impression that the stations were to a considerable 

 degree disseminators of existing information rather than centers of 

 original research. 



More discouraging than these material obstacles to the would-be 

 research worker, however, was the uncertainty which prevailed as to 

 the real function of the experiment station and the ultmiate develop- 



