COXSERVATISM IN SCIExYTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 35 



These I understand to be the various agencies through which 

 an organized effort is being made to convey to agricultural prac- 

 tices the benefits of the exact knowledge we call Science. 



We will first consider, then, scientific investigation as a factor 

 of modern agriculture. This is certainly the logical order, for 

 we must discover truth before we can teach it. What relation 

 does our subject bear to the work of the Experiment Station ? 



There exist, I believe, substantial reasons for the following 

 assertions : 



(1.) Much of the experimental data and conclusions now 

 being published by American Experiment Stations will not only 

 fail to find a permanent and useful place in tlie records of scien- 

 tific progress, but they have been so reached as to make error 

 easily possible. 



(2.) The greatest obstacle to progress, or even safe procedure, 

 in the art of agriculture, now existing, is an insufticient knowl- 

 edge of foundation facts and principles. 



(3.) The two foregoing statements suggest the easy possi- 

 bility of disappointment from any practice induced by Experi- 

 ment Station influence when that practice rests as a superstructure 

 upon unsafe or insufficient foundations. 



I desire to enlarge at some length upon these statements in 

 order that my meaning may be plain. 



And I remark concerning the facts touched by the first state- 

 ment that they are due in part to a cause which serves as a 

 partial excuse for their existence. 



There has existed a natural but unreasonable demand on the 

 part of the public for immediate practical results from Experi- 

 ment Station work, and so from reasons of policy some have felt 

 it to be necessary to rapidly promulgate conclusions with regard 

 to this or that point in agricultural practice. 



In order to do this, experiments of a very practical character 

 have been carried on — experiments, some of them, involving such 

 large chances of error that safe conclusions Avere not possible. 

 Many of the field tests of fertilizers, feeding experiments, and 

 variety tests are of this class, and the records of them have 

 already begun to find their way into that mass of rubbish which 

 will remain forever buried. 



A satisfactory control of such experiments, so that their 



