LECTURE ON AGRICULTURAL INVESTIGATIONS. 



J. H. GILBERT. 



Mr. President, Professors and Students of Jtutgers College, 



and Ladies and Gentlemen : 



I ESTEEM it a high honor and a great responsibility to be called 

 upon to address you on the present occasion; an honor because, 

 perhaps, I am not assuming too much in supposing that I owe the invi- 

 tation to do so to the fact that the joint labors of Sir John Bennet Lawes 

 and myself, in the furtherance of agricultural progress, which have now 

 extended over a period of more than forty-one years, are held in some 

 appreciation in this country; and a responsibility, because I know 

 that I have before me representatives of the best agricultural science in 

 the Eastern States. 



On hearing from Sir John Lawes, before leaving home, that I might 

 probably be asked to lecture at some Agricultural Institutions in Amer- 

 ica, I at once decided that it would be inappropriate for me to attempt 

 to discuss, in any detail, American agricultural practices or experiments ; 

 that in these matters I should be a learner rather than a teacher ; and 

 that it would be more suitable for me to give some account of the results 

 obtained at Rothamsted, leaving my audience to decide for themselves, 

 in great measure, how far the facts and the conclusions were applicable 

 to American conditions. 



In Germany and France very much good work has been done, both 

 in the laboratory and feeding-shed, during the last thirty years or more ; 

 but in Germany, at any rate, we have it on the authority of Prof. 

 Maercker of Halle, one of their leading agricultural chemists, that sys- 

 tematic field experiments are almost abandoned in that country. In 

 1880, Prof. Maercker stated that belief in their value was greatly dimin- 

 ished, and that by some they were declared to be of no value. It was 

 objected that the chemists of the Agricultural Stations have neither the 

 means nor the technical knowledge necessary for carrying out such 

 experiments successfully ; that neither the amount of land nor the funds 

 at their disposal were such as to admit of any safe deductions for appli- 

 cation in practical agriculture from the results ; and that purely physio- 

 logical problems could be better investigated in the laboratory or in the 

 greenhouse. He remarked that, owing to the errors necessarily incident 

 to field experiments conducted by those not acquainted with practical 

 agriculture, the confidence of the practical farmer in the results has been 

 shaken. Indeed, owing to the difficulties and the cost of such inquiries, 



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