14 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



son that make success or failure, are eliminated by the repetition of the trials, until at last a 

 settled conviction pervades community regarding some things, useful to be known. By 

 such trials and the observation of skillful, practical men, the practice of farming has grown 

 into its present shape. 



More will have to be done in the same way. New crops, new varieties of old ones should 

 be tried. And the more frequent the trials, the more exact the detail of the practice, the 

 more intelligent the observer and operator, the more valuable will be the results of these 

 rough experiments. 



So many circumstances enter into an experiment of this sort that the college can hardly 

 try one for the farmers. It must rather be only one of several who try the experiment. For 

 the climate of Central Michigan differs from that to the East, or West, or North. Soils 

 vary, and an experiment tried here would have to be tried also in other localities before it 

 would settle the value of any seeos or practice. 



This, too, is not an age when diplomas and colleges impose on men. They listen as wil- 

 lingly to George Geddes, and " Walks and Talks," as to the professors of Yale or Harvard. 

 So far as one experiment of this sort goes, an enterprising farmer can try it as well as we. 

 The college should help in these, because it should join in whatever helps forward the pro- 

 gress of agriculture. But, perhaps, more rough experimenting could be accomplished by a 

 small appropriation to, say, a half-dozen vigorous farmers' clubs. The libraries, apparatus 

 and professorships of the college look to other purposes in addition to taking a proper share 

 in these rough experiments. 



EXACT EXPERIMENTS. 



The other class of experiments I shall call "exact." They do not differ in kind from the 

 rough experiments, but only in the care with which every element is observed and recorded. 



The aim of the scientific experimenter is to ask of nature, so to speak, one question at a 

 time and only one ; to put the question clearly, and take the answer exactly, adding no in- 

 ference of his own. He may infer, he will do so no doubt, but the inference is his gratuity, 

 each man may add his own. In all sciences this questioning is a matter of extreme diffi- 

 culty. " Rightly to question," says Lord Bacon, " is the half of science." 



In agriculture, exact experiments are of extreme difficulty, and can almost never conform 

 to ideal tests. 



President Hitchcock, of Amherst, said he had been trying experiments in chemistry for 

 twenty years, and added, " I do not know of any so delicate as the farmer is trying." Lie- 

 big says : " When the practical man does attempt to apply scientific teaching he is almost 

 invariably a sufferer. He seems altogether to forget that man does not become intuitively 

 acquainted with scientific teaching, which, like the skillful use of any complex instrument, 

 must be learned." 



These difficult experiments seem to be easy, and invite trial at incompetent hands. And 

 so Appleton's Cyclopaedia says truthfully: "In agricultural reports and periodicals are 

 thousands of reports on the value of manures, with most conflicting statements and a chaos 

 of results." The Hon. Amasa Walker, the distinguished political economist, who, as Secre- 

 tary of Massachusetts, collated the agricultural returns of the counties of the State in 1851, 

 said "They are all chaos, they do not prove anything." 



It is upon accurate experiments that agriculture must depend, for a change from an unde- 

 veloped art into the standing of a science. 



Exact experiments demand a large outlay of money. Lawes & Gilbert have spent 

 $15,000 a year in field experiments that have almost uniformly borne good crops. The 

 universal testimony of those who undertake these investigations is to their costliness. Such 

 experiments come slowly to their results. They would weary out those who wait for re- 

 sults. Bussey Institute, the Agricultural School of Harvard University, with its farm and 

 seven professors, is prosecuting admirable field experiments. Some seventy experiment 

 stations in Germany, Chambers of Commerce in England, George Ville in the Jardin des 

 Plants of Paris, Mechi, Lawes & Gilbert, Johnson of Yale, and all the experimenters of the 

 world, would no doubt feel well repaid if the combined efforts of all together could elicit 

 one new fact, and firmly establish it, each year. They will altogether fail of so rapid 

 progress. "It takes ten years, at least," says President Clark, of Amherst, "to establish 

 one agricultural fact." Maes. Agrl. 1872-3, p. 182. 



Accurate experimenting taken alone does not serve as an illustration of farming. The re- 

 sults come too slowly to the student ; he needs the example of ordinary good farming before 

 him, where the results appear from year to year. 



TO BEGIN WITH THE SOIL. 



j Dr. Thomas Anderson, the chemist of the Highland and Agricultural Society, who has 

 Jbeen an authqrity in experimental agriculture for many years, lays it down as a rule in ac- 

 curate experimenting, that the field to be used should be'dirided into plots, treated exactly 



