726 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



There were very few standard books dealing with the principles and 

 practice of agriculture and horticulture. Farmers' institutes were 

 largely social or political gatherings instead of schools for the farmers, 

 and if a seed-corn special or a dairy special had been run it would have 

 attracted small attention. The general attitude toward experimenta- 

 tion and science in agriculture was decidedly skeptical. The idea that 

 there was something occult or which could not be fathomed or explained 

 in successful agricultural practice still had a considerable hold. 



The eight or ten experiment stations maintained in as many States 

 received only small support from their States, and to a quite large 

 extent were engaged in inspection work. A college or station da i re- 

 building, or an insectary, or an agronomic laboratory was as unheard 

 of as a respiration calorimeter. The equipment was meager and the 

 working force quite limited. In only twelve States had a need been 

 felt for a fertilizer control, which to-day is exercised in thirty-four 

 States and applies to an industry amounting to more than $50,000,000 

 a year. There was no feeding-stuffs control, no inspection of nursery 

 stock or seeds or creamery apparatus or insecticide materials, and no 

 laws for the control of San Jose scale or other insects and diseases dan- 

 gerous to agriculture. 



At that time there was no simple method for testing milk, as a means 

 for measuring the value of individual cows and as a basis for paying 

 for milk at creameries. The basic principles underlying dairying were 

 far from being known — that cream ripening is due to special'cultures of 

 bacteria which affect the quality and the flavor of the product, that the 

 cheese value as well as the butter value of milk is largely dependent 

 on the fat content, that cheese ripening is due to well-defined organ- 

 isms and conditions, that cold curing of cheese is not only practicable 

 but a great safeguard to the product, and that many cases of inferior 

 product are due to faults of the milk which may be avoided by the 

 curd test. Sanitary and pasteurized milk were almost unknown; the 

 various causes which contribute to unclean and unhealthy milk were 

 but little understood. 



It was not known that clovers and other legumes are able to store 

 up the nitrogen of the air in their growth, much less that this ability 

 is due to a symbiotic relation between the plants and bacteria on their 

 roots; that atmospheric nitrogen may be made available to plants by 

 several other means; and that nitrification and denitrification are very 

 important processes in relation to plant nutrition, and are accomplished 

 by micro-organisms in the soil whose activity is controlled by a variety 

 of conditions. The theory of tillage and its value for conserving 

 moisture was far from being understood, as were also the use of 

 fertilizers and the requirements of crops under irrigation. 



There was little conception of the possibilities of plant breeding and 

 selection, to improve such common crops as corn and the cereals, 



