CONVENTION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 407 



made by the class jury indicates a liberal recognition of the merits of 

 the exhibit as a whole, and of its separate parts. No formal notice 

 has been received, however, of the awards as finally made by the 

 superior jury, which passed upon the recommendations of all the 

 juries. 



The report of the committee on engineering experiment stations was 

 presented by C. S. Murkland. No attempt had been made to secure 

 Congressional action during the past year and the outlook in that direc- 

 tion was considered less favorable than formerly. The committee 

 accordingly recommended its discontinuance. In adopting this recom- 

 mendation the Association recorded its judgment that "such stations 

 are demanded by the industrial necessities of the age and should 

 receive favorable consideration b}^ Congress in view of the inestima- 

 ble benefits that would accrue from them to the people." 



The committee on graduate study at Washington made the follow- 

 ing recommendations, which were adopted by the Association: "In 

 view of the improbability that the Smithsonian Institution will adopt 

 the suggestions of this Association regarding the organization of a 

 Bureau of Graduate Study, your committee recommends that the 

 Association take no further action in this direction. The committee 

 also believes that for the present further advantage should be taken 

 of the foundation already successfully laid by the Secretary of Agri- 

 culture, and it therefore recommends that the Association express its 

 appreciation of the practical efforts which he has made on behalf of 

 this movement, and ask him to consider the practicability of enlarging 

 the present plan for graduate study in that Department, and, if he 

 deems it wise, to invite the cooperation of other departments of the 

 Government, in order that wider opportunities may be open to the 

 graduates of the institutions represented in this Association, as well as 

 of other institutions, to engage in graduate study and research in con- 

 nection with the work of the National Government." 



Dr. Bernard Dyer, of London, England, attended the convention 

 as the representative of the Lawes Agricultural Trust, and delivered 

 a course of three lectures based principally on the investigations, 

 at the Rothamsted Experiment Station, of soils which have been in 

 continuous wheat culture. Samples of the soils from plats which had 

 received different fertilizing materials or none, representing different 

 depths up to 90 in., have been taken at intervals of several years, 

 the last series reported upon being taken in 1893, after being in 

 wheat for 50 years. In all, between 4,000 and 5,000 samples have 

 been studied. Dr. Dyer's lectures dealt with the results of these 

 studies as related to the principal fertilizing ingredients and chlorin in 

 the soils, their availability, migration in the soil and subsoil, leaching, 

 etc. The fallacy of soil analj^sis without reference to the form or 



