222 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



The agricultural department is doing important work, 

 which in time will bring out new and valuable facts. To 

 establish facts relating to the cheapest and best methods of 

 feeding both plants and animals requires time and careful 

 work, as well as high intelligence. No doubt information of 

 great value to the farmer will be secured by continuing the 

 experiments now in progress in this department, but the 

 farmers must be })atient, and not overlook the fact that many 

 of the experiments tried must necessarily prove failures, ex- 

 cept to teach how not to do, and that the few which promise 

 to secure important steps of progress in agriculture should 

 not be recommended to the public until their value has been 

 fully proved by several years of trial, under conditions as 

 varied as they would be likely to meet under the directions 

 of the farmer. 



Your committee found every department of the station in 

 excellent order, and the work is evidently being done in a 

 faithful manner, directed by high intelligence. 



If the members of the Board of Agriculture would visit the 

 station more frequently, and make themselves familiar with 

 the important work that is being done in every department, 

 they would be better prepared to convince the farmer that 

 the station, in a money point of view, is a great benefit to 

 the State ; and that, if he will put himself in communication 

 with it, it will be a great benefit to him as an individual. 

 The money which it has cost to run the station since it was 

 established is very small, when compared with the money it 

 has saved by sending out information relating to the best 

 methods of destroying insects and fungi, and how best to 

 feed plants and animals. 



It is to be regretted that an institution so profitable to the 

 State should not have for its use money sufiicient to secure 

 the undivided attention of the professors who are at the head 

 of each department. It may be said that it is very easy to 

 select a few experiments to be tried, and place them in charge 

 of an assistant; but a thoughtful man realizes a serious diffi- 

 culty at the outset. An ordinary man, while digging post 

 holes or potatoes, may think of a hundred experiments to be 

 tried; while a thoughtful man, who has had experience in 

 the business, would be likely to think of five hundred experi- 



