3 1 6 Memorial of George Brozon Goode. 



was begun. The Agricultural Report, which began in 1841, and was 

 until 1862 printed as a part of that of the Patent Office, became j^early 

 more extensive, and showed a general average annual growth in value. 

 In 1854 work in economic entomology began, with the appointment 

 of Townend Glover to investigate and report upon the habits of 

 insects injurious and beneficial to agriculture. In 1855 the chemical and 

 botanical divisions were inaugurated. 



" David P. Holloway, of Indiana, the thirteenth Commissioner of Pat- 

 ents, was instrumental in effecting a most important reform in the scien- 

 tific administration of the Government. In his first annual report, made 

 in January, 1862, he advocated enthusiastically the creation of a depart- 

 ment of the productive arts, to be charged with the care of agriculture 

 and all the other industrial interests of the country, and he was so far 

 successful that on May 15 Congress established the Department of Agri- 

 culture. The first Commissioner was Isaac Newton, who had been for 

 a year or more superintendent of the agricultural division of the Patent 

 Office. From 1862 to 1889 there were six Commissioners: Newton 

 (1862-1867), Capron (1867-1871), Watts (1871-1877), I^e Due (1877- 

 i88i)-, Loring (1881-1885), and Colman (1885-1889), and under the 

 administration of each important advances were made, and the value of 

 the work became yearly greater. Buildings were erected, a chemical 

 laboratory established, the departments of animal industry, economic 

 ornithology and mammalogy, pomology, vegetable pathology, silk cul- 

 ture, microscopic, forestr}^ and experiment stations were added, and the 

 system of publications greatly extended. The Department, as now 

 organized, is one of the most vigorous of our national scientific institu- 

 tions, and with its powerful staff and close affiliations with the forty-six 

 State agricultural experiment stations, manned as they are by nearly 

 four hundred trained investigators, it has possibilities for the future 

 which can scarce!}^ be overestimated.' 



The term of the ninth President was too short to afford matter for 



' The first agricultural experiment station under that specific designation in 

 the United States was established at Middletown, Connecticut, in 1S75, by the joint 

 action of Mr. Orange Judd, the trustees of the university at Middletown, and the 

 State legislature, with Professor W. O. Atwater as director, and was located in the 

 Orange Judd Hall of Natural Science. The example was speedily followed else- 

 where, so that in 1880 there were four, and in 1886 some seventeen of these institu- 

 tions in fourteen States. The appropriation by Congress of $1^,000 per annum to 

 each of the States and Territories which have established agricultural colleges, or 

 agricultural departments of colleges, has led to the establishment of new stations or 

 the increased development of stations previously established under State authority, 

 so that there are to-day forty-six stations in the United States. Several of these 

 have substations working under their management. Every State has at least one 

 station, several have two. one has three, and Dakota has set the Territories an exam- 

 ple by establishing one within her boinidaries. 



These forty-six stations employ nearly four hundred men in the prosecution of 

 experimental inquiry. The appropriation l)y the United States Government for the 

 current year, for them and for the Office of Experiment Stations in this Department, 



