No. 4.] AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 67 



They were made possible through the efforts of agricultural 

 college men, and their staffs have been selected almost wholly 

 from the graduates of the institutions into whose care they 

 are committed. It is safe to say that, without the Morrill 

 act of 1862, the Hatch act of 1887 would even now be a re- 

 mote possibility. It has become, therefore, the mission of 

 the agricultural colleges to guard and cherish this effort of 

 investigation as carefully and as loyally as they have the de- 

 partments of instruction. 



But what should this investigation be ? In other words, 

 what is the function — the mission, if you please — of the 

 agricultural experiment station ? I ask these questions be- 

 cause, in my judgment, the true work of the experiment 

 station is not properly understood by the agricultural public. 

 It is even possible that here and there a board of trustees 

 has misconceived the real intent and requirements of the 

 Hatch act. 



There is a tendency to ignore the essential difference be- 

 tween instruction in things known and the discovery of 

 things unknown, between teaching and investigation. The 

 function of the experiment station is to investigate. It is 

 not a pedagogical institution, nor is its primary work to give 

 popular instruction from the institute platform. It is neces- 

 sary for the station worker to keep in touch with the peda- 

 gogue and with public opinion and needs ; but his chief 

 business should be to continuously and severely study the 

 unsolved problems in chemistry, physics and biology, whose 

 solution is essential to progress in agricultural practice. 

 Now, there will rarely be combined in one man the success- 

 ful pedagogue, investigator and institute speaker. The 

 limitations of time and strength, to say nothing of the 

 special fitness and preparation for each lino of work, preclude 

 the possibility of the highest success in any direction when 

 thought and energy are so divided. 



At the convention of college and station men held in 

 Minneapolis in the summer of 1897, as chairman of the 

 section of agriculture and chemistry I pointed out the fact 

 that on the basis of returns from thirty-four stations less 

 than one man in each station is devoting himself wholly to 

 station work ; that theoretically half the time of those who 



