REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR. 



The work of the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion during the past year has in the main followed the usual 

 lines, but in most directions with constantly broadening scope 

 and material increase in amount. The completion of Clark 

 Hall, which will amply accommodate both the educational and 

 the experimental work in the department of botany and vege- 

 table pathology, will materially increase our facilities for inves- 

 tigation in this subject; but the interruption to work, made 

 unavoidable by the necessity of moving and reinstalling the 

 large amount of scientific apparatus and material, has neces- 

 sarily reduced the amount of work in this department during 

 the past year. The interruption has proved especially serious 

 in connection with the study of problems relating to hothouse 

 crops, as such work on the removal of department headquarters 

 was necessarily discontinued in the old houses, and the new 

 will not be completed until next spring. With this single 

 exception, the work in all departments of the station has been 

 prosecuted under conditions affording all the usual advantages. 



Changes in Organization and in Staff. 

 The retirement from active administrative duties on the 1st 

 of July of Dr. C. A. Goessmann, who from the date of its pas- 

 sage in 1884 has been charged with the execution of the fertil- 

 izer control law, and who was at the head of that branch of our 

 chemical department carrying on general analytical and research 

 work in connection with soils, manures, fertilizers and fertili- 

 zer problems, rendered reorganization in that department desir- 

 able. The chemical work of the station during the preceding 

 eleven years had been divided between two distinct and entirely 

 independent divisions, and carried on in separate laboratories. 

 These divisions were known as the division of fertilizers and 



