EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. XXX. February, 1914. No. 2. 



There is an impression that the progress in experimental work 

 on the feeding of farm animals is not all that might be expected or 

 is desirable, considering the importance of the subject and the promi- 

 nence it has held in the past. This feeling was voiced in the address 

 of a former president of the American Society of Animal Nutrition, 

 who expressed the belief that "nutrition investigations are falling 

 behind other branches of agricultural science '' — that there had not 

 been a comparable scientific activity in comparison with other de- 

 partments in the field of agriculture. Other speakers before that 

 society have recently expressed a similar view ; and sucli a conclusion 

 would seem to be a fair deduction from the output in the form of 

 publications. 



This impression applies not only to the amount of fundamental 

 investigation in animal nutrition, but to the character and progiTSS 

 of the ordinary experimental work. Not that there has not been an 

 increase in the amount of advanced work, and an improvement in 

 many of the common feeding experiments, but that relatively the 

 improvement has been small. With the progress of experiment sta- 

 t ion work and the larger emphasis on investigation, it seemed reason- 

 able to expect that more institutions should feel the need of depart- 

 ing from the conventional range of feeding experiments and more 

 men representing animal husbandry at the stations should feel 

 impelled to prepare for advanced and productive inquiry. 



With some notable exceptions, the work in animal husbandry is 

 to a considerable extent at a standstill. The easier things have been 

 done. The more difficult and constructive stage has been reached, 

 but there has not been a very large rising to the emergency. It is 

 only rarely that a feeding project of xVdams fund grade is sub- 

 mitted nowadays, but the experiments of conventional type go on 

 apparently without end and, it is feared, without marking much 

 permanent* advance. 



Quite a proportion of the feeding experiments still deal only with 

 the economic and commercial phases of the subject, or with com- 

 parative values and effects; and as economic conditions are con- 

 stantly changing and vary in different localities, the results lack 



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