No. 4.] EXPERIMENT STATION. 221 



but those who jump at conclusions and mix wrong, apply it 

 to the crop, and destroy both leaf and fruit. Who is to 

 blame for this ? Certainly not the officers of the station ; 

 they are not supposed to furnish the brain power to the 

 farmers, and to those who are not farmers and never will be. 



But a better day has come, — the farmers of Massachu- 

 setts during the past few years have made rapid progress 

 towards a better understanding of the terms relating to feed- 

 ing both plants and animals, and are beginning to realize the 

 importance of this knowledge, if they would reap the full 

 benefit of the experiment station. 



The Massachusetts Agricultural College and the agricult- 

 ural department of Harvard University are educating con- 

 siderable numbers of intelligent young men in those lines 

 which relate to the best methods of farm work. These young 

 men, when educated, go to their homes and for a time mingle 

 with the farmers of their native towns, and some of them 

 have taken their fathers' farms and run them to a larger 

 profit than their fathers were able to, thus proving to the 

 Avhole community that their education is worth more than a 

 lifetime of practice. 



The time is not far distant when the farmers will realize 

 that to make a success in farming it is just as important that 

 the young man should receive an education especially adapted 

 to his occupation, as should the clergyman and the physician. 

 "When this day comes, our experiment station will receive full 

 credit for the work it does ; but to-day there is not a single 

 department that gets but a small portion of the credit which 

 honestly belongs to it. 



If we should blot out all that the department of chemistry 

 has done, we should be amazed at the results. The farmers 

 would be cut off from all help as to the value of any fertilizer 

 or the condition of any water that might be thought to be un- 

 healthy, unless they expended what to them would be large 

 sums for a special analysis. 



Blot out all the work that has been done by the depart- 

 ment of entomology and destroy all of the information sent 

 out, and the result would be the destruction in a few years 

 of millions of dollars' worth of the farmers' crops ; and the 

 same would be true of some of the other departments. 



