1916.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 31. 11a 



need in part through the co-operation of the Boston Market 

 Gardeners' Association, the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, the Massachusetts Agricultural College and the Experi- 

 ment Station, which together provide the funds necessary to pay 

 the salary of Mr. H. F. Tompson, in whose thorough compe- 

 tence the work he has already done justifies the fullest con- 

 fidence. Mr. Tompson spends a large share of his time among 

 the growers in the Boston market-garden district. His activi- 

 ties thus far are more largely of the nature of extension than 

 experiment, but his close touch with the market-garden in- 

 dustry has enabled him to indicate lines of investigation which 

 seem to me most greatly needed, and one of these, through the 

 assignment thereto of a promising graduate student who has 

 been given an assistantship, has already been taken up. 



Another result of Mr. Tompson's work with and for the 

 market gardeners has been that their interest and belief in the 

 possibilities of scientific investigation and practical experiment 

 have been greatly stimulated. As a result the Boston Market 

 Gardeners' Association has presented to the Legislature now in 

 session a petition for the enactment of a bill providing, first, an 

 appropriation of S20,000 for the purchase of land, the erection 

 of buildings and the equipment of a market-garden experiment 

 station, to be under the management and control of the trustees 

 of the Massachusetts Agricultural College; and second, an 

 annual appropriation of $10,000 for the support of such a 

 station. The enactment of this bill would give m.eans for the 

 acquirement and support of a plant which should soon abun- 

 dantly demonstrate the wisdom of the legislation asked for. 

 The funds provided for the annual support should prove for the 

 present fairly adequate to support both the experimental and 

 demonstrational work at the market-garden station itself, and 

 also the related scientific investigation of problems affecting the 

 market-garden industry carried on in the central experiment 

 station laboratories. 



Experimental Demonstrations. — No direct provision for the 

 support of these has yet been made, but the enactment of the 

 bill establishing a market-garden station would go a long ways 

 towards satisfying the need in a very important branch of our 

 agriculture, for the bill provides for demonstration as well as 



