194 The Connecticut Pomological Society 



practical farmer could make. Why, bless your heart, of course 

 not. It would be a wrong use of funds to do that. 



The Station is here to do just those things which the prac- 

 tical farmer cannot afford to do. The failure of an experi- 

 mental crop may be as valuable as a money-making crop. The 

 Station cannot afiford to make money by farming. It should, 

 of course, do everything as carefully and economically as pos- 

 sible; and the fruits of its labors are not to be measured by any 

 revolutions in the practice of farming but by a gradual increase 

 in knowledge of the facts which make success attainable and 

 result in gradual improvement in farm methods. 



Many of you are and have been experimenting for years on 

 ten, twenty, fifty and one hundred acres of orchards. It seems, 

 therefore, rather idle to call me in to say anything about fertilizer 

 tests made in two places on a fraction of a single acre and only 

 for a few years. 



There is this consolation, however, that you know by this 

 time, quite as well as I, the uncertainties and vexations of this 

 kind of work, and will not expect from my work more than is 

 warranted. 



It is interesting to note that in Germany the subject of the 

 fertilizing of orchards has been taken up and is being studied 

 with the care and thoroughness for which German experimenters 

 are noted 



This work was begun in 1894 and was planned to continue 

 for a term of twelve years at least before the final conclusions 

 were made. 



The potash syndicate has appropriated $7,500 for the object, 

 six or more of the pomological institutes have jointly taken up 

 the scientific work of the tests, and prominent fruit-growers in 

 many places are carrying out the practical field work. The 

 results, which we may not get in detail for five or six years 

 yet, will certainly be most helpful to us as well as to the Ger- 

 mans. Certain facts have already been published, but they 

 have chiefly a theoretic interest. 



It is worth noting, however, that in their experiments on 

 the value and effect of different forms of plant-food, the Ger- 

 man experimenters have started out with the following formula 

 for an acre of orchard: 90 pounds of nitrogen, 45 pounds of 



