36 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



apparent outcome may represent the truth, is exceedingh' diffi- 

 cult, and even under the best of conditions much repetition and 

 care are necessary to prevent reaching erroneous conckisions. 



The discovery and establishment of a truth is no common- 

 place task. It is not easy so to hedge about a new principle or 

 fact with accurate data that it may be accepted with unreserved 

 confidence, and it has often required years of enthusiastic 

 devotion to scientific labor to accomplish this. These facts the 

 unscientific mind does not apprehend, and so the public is 

 inclined to expect Experiment Stations to reach safe results with 

 the uniform certainty and regularity of a machine. 



We are fully convinced that we should have less commercial 

 work, less of the extremely practical experiments, and more of 

 elaborate and severe scientific investigation, — at least there is 

 need that. there shall be less haste in the promulgation of con- 

 clusions because of a more rigid inquiry into the basis upon 

 which they rest. 



There is certainly one reason that every farmer ought to 

 apx^reciate, why any conclusion which affects his business should 

 be guaranteed by the most exacting inquiry, viz. : the business of 

 agriculture cannot afford the delay or disaster Avhich may result 

 from wrong conclusions. Could we have afforded to adopt the 

 Babcock Test as the basis of commercial dairy work had not the 

 facts fundamental to its use been well established ? Should it 

 be proved that the diagnostic properties of tuberculin are not 

 what a conservative opinion has claimed, — a result we do not fear 

 — would it not be properly regarded as a great disaster for such a 

 mistake to have been made ? AVe plead, therefore, for the con- 

 servatism of exact scientific methods in our Experiment Stations 

 and for a patient confidence on the j^art of the public in what 

 may appear to be slow progress in the solution of Nature's 

 problems. 



My second point touching Ex])eriment Station Avork relates to 

 the imperative need for a better knowledge of those fundamental 

 facts and principles which Ave think of as belonging to pure 

 science. 



We are to some extent attempting to build a superstructure 

 upon insufficient foundations. For instance, we are conducting 

 feeding experiments with foods, the. nature and function of 

 whose constituents we do not fully understand, and consequently 



