8o STATIC P0M01.0GICAT. SOCIETY. 



EXPERIMENT STATIONS AND HORTICULTURE. 



Prof. Chas. D. Woods, Director Maine Agricultural Experi- 

 ment Station, Orono. 



What I have to say this evening concerning Experiment Sta- 

 tions is little more than a compilation from State publications. 

 I have drawn freely and without credit from the publications 

 of the Experiment Stations and from the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture, to illustrate the lines of work the stations are 

 pursuing in connection with horticulture. Before taking up such 

 illustrations, a word explaining the origin of stations and 

 their purpose is appropriate. 



THE ORIGIN OE EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



Long ago an agricultural writer said : "Farming is the per- 

 petual trying of experiments with soils, manures, and crops ; 

 with cattle and cattle food ; with milk, butter, and cheese ; with 

 plows, harvesters, and harrows ; with an almost endless list of 

 things. The most successful farmers — those that get the most 

 out of their land, their cattle, their crops, their fertilizers, their 

 implements and their labor — are those who experiment them- 

 selves most industriously, most successfully and most intelli- 

 gently, and who take the fullest advantage of the experiments 

 of others. The best agriculture is that which, in old countries, 

 on worn and intractable soils, has learned by long continued 

 and varied experiments to make the gain of farming sure." 



Once the farmer made the rude tools he needed for practice 

 in his art ; he now employs implements and machinery which can 

 be made only with large capital and the highest mechanical skill 

 and by men who make this manufacture a business. In like 

 manner, the experiments which he can make do not meet his 

 needs to-day. The research of finding out nature's secrets, the 

 discovery of the laws which underlie the right practice of agri- 

 culture, is expensive of time and money. The more useful it is 

 to be, the greater must be the outlay of money, labor and scien- 

 tific skill. Within the past fifty years farmers and scientific 

 men interested in farming have seen the advantage of using the 



