A SYSTEM OF RECORDING AGRICULTURAL 

 EXPERLMENTS. 



By ]. Burtt-Davy, F.L.S. 



Much time is wasted, and many valuable records and obser- 

 vations are lost, for lack of a suitable system of recording" them. 

 I have inquired into many methods in vogue in different 

 countries, but have never yet found one that was entirely 

 satisfactory. They are usually faulty through being either too 

 elaborate to be practicable with the clerical staff available, or 

 go to the other extreme of being too haphazard and scattered 

 through voluminous note books. 



Systematic record-keeping is sufficiently difficult on a single 

 small station, but when one official has under his control 

 experiments at seven or more separate stations, in different 

 parts of the country, the problem is anything but simple. 



As the result of many years experience in Experiment Station 

 work, I have found that card catalogues, and any system of 

 loose-leaf records, is unsatisfactory because they are either too 

 cumbersome to be carried from place to place, or the cards or 

 loose leaves are too easily misplaced. A number of separate 

 note-books is equally unsatisfactory; they are often not at hand 

 when wanted, especially if one is called unexpectedly to visit 

 an outlying station. 



There is also the problem of duplication of work to be 

 considered; a set of records must be kept by the Station 

 Superintend.ent, and should always be accessible to him; copies 

 should also be in the hands of the officer responsible for the 

 direction of the experiments. As a rule there is not a 

 sufliciently large staff to duplicate these documents. 



To cope with these various problems I have developed a 

 comparatively simple system of daybook and ledger entries, 

 and by means of carbon-paper books one entry can be duplicated 

 and sent either from the Head Office to the Station or vice %'crsa. 

 Let us explain the system briefly, and as the experiments usually 

 emanate from the Head Office, we will begin there. 



Before the commencement of each season an outline of the 

 season's work is drawn up. This cannot be, quite final as 

 additional experiments will be devised as occasion arises. Where 

 1,000 to 1.500 experiments are conducted during a season it is 

 an easy matter to loose sight of some of them when drawing 

 up a report, unless the records are kept together in one place; 

 this is the point at which much loss both of time and records, 

 begins ; if the instructions for an experiment are sent to the 

 Station separately, they may be lost sight of at either or both 

 places. To keep 1,500 records in one book, makes that book 

 too bulky to carry out to the plots; to scatter them through 

 15 books, means that some of the books will get out of place 

 or be lost. I have reached the conclusion that a consecutive 

 list of all experiments conducted each season, with detailed 

 account of the reason for each, must be kept in one hook. 



