No. 4.] COLLEGE AXD STATION. 159 



credit to their account. In addition to this, however, in the long 

 line of researches that bear upon the economy of stock feeding, 

 upon the combination and use of insecticides and fungicides, upon 

 the elaboration and the use of chemical formulas adapted to indi- 

 vidual soils, upon the saving and application of manures, upon 

 the relation of foods to the composition of animals, upon problems 

 of tillage, upon tests of mechanical appliances for all departments 

 of the farm, upon the more exact data of dairying operations, 

 upon questions of seeding and harvesting crops, upon drainage 

 trials, and along other lines of art applied to husbandry, the sta- 

 tions have given useful information that, while not startling or 

 apparently adequate to revolutionize farming, yet adds to the in- 

 formation that will enable us to make practice more precise. 



It is not probable that there lie either laws to be discovered or 

 application of old laws that will rise in significance and stand as 

 marked in the history of agriculture as the discovery and applica- 

 tion of steam and electricity to the industries. Our industry is an 

 old one, and the work of the investigator is that of patient inquiry 

 into the domain of small things, with the expectation that at most 

 each bit of information gained will apply to the relatively limited 

 domain of farm practice, and affect the outcome of the products 

 of each individual farmer but moderately. Yet increased knowl- 

 edge in any domain may affect the income of the agriculture of 

 the nation vastly. Thus any process that will increase the crop 

 of corn by one per cent will make a difference of twenty million 

 bushels of corn ; it is evident that there can be applied a stimulus 

 to our agriculture that might easily make a gain of 50 per cent, or 

 add a billion bushels to our annual corn crop. 



Our stations not only find facts for agriculture, but stimulate 

 it. So long as the American farmer grows, as he does, vastly 

 more crops per capita than farmers of any other nationality, it is 

 fair to presume that he is a good judge of the efficacy of his edu- 

 cational forces. These forces he is supporting with increased 

 zeal year by year. 



The Chairman. An opportunity will now be given for 

 questions. Please improve the time. 



Dr. H. H. Goodell (president of the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural College). The ground has been so well 

 covered that there is little I desire to say. But there is 

 one point I want to bring out and that I want to explain to 

 all here. Allusion has been made to the two years' course. 



