No. 4.1 EXPERIMENTS AND STATION WORK. 195 



Report of Coboiittee on Expp:riments and 

 Station Work. 



[Adopted at the Annual Meeting, Jan. 11, 1898.] 



The committee of the Board of Agriculture on experi- 

 ments and station work has the honor to report that one 

 meeting of the committee has been held in Amherst, on the 

 grounds of the Agricultural College, during the year. Owing 

 to the absence of the chairman of the committee during the 

 earlier portion of the year, the meeting was not held until 

 November 9, — a date too late to give much opportunity for 

 inspection of field experiments, which also is desirable. 

 Unless, however, more than one entire day can be devoted to 

 such a meeting, it will be found impossible to make even a 

 superficial acquaintance with the work of the experiment 

 station in all its branches. Your committee was early on 

 the ground and devoted the entire day to the work, and yet, 

 even with the omission noted above, found itself constantly 

 obliged to hurry more than it wished in order to cover the 

 ground laid out. 



The programme of the day consisted in meeting in suc- 

 cession each of the heads of departments of the station 

 — seven in number — by appointment in the office or labo- 

 ratory especially devoted to his work, listening to a brief 

 statement of the nature and results of recent work and a 

 discussion of future plans. Since the reports of the ofiicers 

 of the experiment station accompany and comprise a part of 

 your report (Agriculture of Massachusetts), it does not 

 appear either necessary or desirable to summarize the facts 

 elicited here. 



It sufiices to say, in conclusion, that members of the com- 

 mittee present expressed themselves as greatly interested in 

 what they saw and heard, as well as much impressed with 

 the scope and importance of the work of the station. 



