1198 EXPERIMENT STATIONS 



The writer does not overlook the body of good work 

 being turned out by the American experimenters in hor- 

 ticultural lines, but this is not the subject of the present 

 discussion. 



The training of research workers. 



The diverse character of experimentation in horti- 

 culture as set forth indicates somewhat the training 

 that investigators in this field should have. It follows 

 from the importance attached to science in horticul- 

 ture, that thorough training in the sciences is impera- 

 tive, but the distinctions here made indicate just as 

 clearly that a person trained in the sciences and not in 

 the art and business of horticulture is sadly handi- 

 capped. We may put down as the first essential in the 

 mental equipment of the research worker, a broad and 

 severe scientific training. The second essential is, per- 

 fect familiarity with garden, orchard and greenhouse 

 plants and methods of handling their products. It is 

 not sufficient that the horticultural experimenter 

 know but the industry in which he may specialize. 

 Knowledge of what is done in the greenhouse, for 

 example, is indispensable to the experimenter with 

 fruits, offering him suggestions at every turn. Whatever 

 knowledge a man may possess of the needs and care 

 of plants in any field of agriculture will be helpful in a 

 specialized field. Perhaps the ability to correlate 

 science and art should be put down as a third essential. 



But at present chief emphasis must be laid on the 

 scientific training. The art of horticulture is sufficiently 

 well taught in agricultural colleges, and the money- 

 earning value of an education is in most institutions 

 over-emphasized. The atmosphere of practicums and 

 money-making which prevails in most of our colleges 

 is not one in which investigators are born and bred. 

 Instead, for the proper training of a horticulturist 

 there should be an atmosphere of investigation for 

 investigation's sake, of sound learning, of appreciation 

 of science not only in its applications but as pure 

 science and for its disciplinary value. It is desirable, 

 almost imperative, that one training to become a hor- 

 ticulturist should take a post-graduate course in which 

 special attention may be devoted to the sciences and 

 the problems of horticulture. 



Equipment for research. 



Less need be said about the material equipment for 

 horticultural research than the mental make-up of the 

 worker. The nation and the states have been free in 

 the expenditure of money for experimental work. Not 

 a few horticultural departments in the experiment 

 stations of the country are over-equipped with land, 

 buildings and laboratories the things that money 

 can buy. Certain it is that the output from the insti- 

 tutions conducting research is not in proportion to the 

 money spent or to the number of men on the staff. 

 The fact that equipment and materials do not create, 

 needs emphasis everywhere in horticultural experi- 

 mentation. The custom of obtaining money to build 

 up a department without specific work to be done is a 

 vicious one from which there must in time be a reac- 

 tion. Opportunity, equipment and problem should go 

 together, and all these are valueless without a man 

 with initiative, ideas, and training to use them. 

 There are probably more over-equipped departments 

 in horticulture than under-equipped ones. Large 

 experimenting is sometimes small experimenting and 

 small experimenting large experimenting. 



In one particular, however, the horticultural depart- 

 ments of the country are sadly under-equipped. There 

 are no comprehensive plantations of economic plants 

 in the experiment stations of the United States. The 

 amelioration of plants is the chief work in horticulture 

 and it would seem that the establishment of economic 

 gardens is imperative, since material to be used advan- 

 tageously must be near at hand. At least one station 



in every distinct agricultural region in the country 

 should have an economic garden where may be found 

 the food plants of the world suitable for the region. 

 This should be an agricultural garden, not a plant 

 museum to show the curious and the ornamental; in 

 it agriculture must be dominant, not recessive. 



Organization for research. 



Horticulture is composed of so many industries and 

 involves so many sciences that its problems are too 

 diverse and too complex to permit of many definite 

 statements in regard to organization for research. 

 But several generalities may be set down as essentials 

 to a good organization: (1) There must be a man in 

 command a broadly trained man. (2) The position 

 of the experimenter should be permanent, subject only 

 to efficiency. (3) The time and thought of the investi- 

 gator must not be taken up with other activities, as 

 administration, teaching, extension work and the like. 



(4) The organization must be permanent, to give con- 

 tinuity, coherence and exhaustiveness to the work. 



(5) The organization should usually correspond with 

 the subdivisions of horticulture rather than the sciences 

 upon which it is founded. That is, there should be 

 pomologists, gardeners and florists, rather than botan- 

 ists, chemists and entomologists. (6) Money and effort 

 should be concentrated upon a few comprehensive 

 problems that can be exhaustively carried to sound 

 conclusions. Too many experiments are but frag- 

 ments of a larger problem; discovered to be such, they 

 are often discarded after waste of time and money. 



The third of the essentials just given needs amplifica- 

 tion. The greatest deterrent to good work in experi- 

 mentation is the association of research with teaching 

 either in the classroom or from the institute platform. 

 So much of the time and energy of men having these 

 dual-purpose positions is taken by the more present, 

 and therefore more pressing, work of teaching that 

 they are often investigators only in name. In every 

 institution where teaching and investigating are com- 

 bined, the demand is naturally strongest from students, 

 and investigation suffers. There are, it is true, advan- 

 tages in the combined position of teacher and investi- 

 gator, but few indeed are the cases in which the dis- 

 advantages do not outweigh them and always the 

 research work suffers. 



There should be cooperation between the horticul- 

 tural experimenters in the several states and the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. A most pathetic 

 spectacle in our agricultural institutions is that of iso- 

 lated men attacking one and the same problem, dupli- 

 cating results, often duplicating errors and in either case 

 wasting public funds. So far as possible there should 

 not be overlapping of experimental work, unless dupli- 

 cation is desirable to make more certain the results. 

 In the latter case the work should be jointly planned 

 and from time to time compared and adjusted to secure 

 efficiency and economy. The Society for Horticultural 

 Science is an excellent clearing-house in which the 

 official horticultural experimenters in North America 

 may interchange ideas and adjust their work. 



Theories in horticulture are so general, facts so 

 numerous, evidence of one kind or another so easily 

 adduced, that the temptation is strong to state a theory, 

 supply facts from the many already known, adorn the 

 work with a dash of personally collected evidence and 

 call the result an experiment. Such work lacks coher- 

 ence and is incomplete. Few, indeed, are the horticul- 

 tural investigators who make their work invincible by 

 exhaustiveness. Again, the urgent call for results has 

 led to the study of problems admitting of hurried con- 

 clusions rather than those that are fundamental, and 

 for this reason much work is unfinished and incon- 

 clusive. The superb exhaustiveness of Darwin's work, 

 much of it horticultural experimentation, should 

 furnish inspiration and method to investigators in this 



