December 3, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



119. 



those who should avail themselves of its 

 advantages can leave home. 



Farmers' Institutes.— This phase of 

 the college work, as it affects the farmer, 

 is already -well organized and bringing 

 splendid results. Through the farmers' 

 institutes, farmers' conventions, instruc- 

 tion trains, demonstration farms, etc., the 

 whole state is being reached. It is ex- 

 pected that the representatives of the 

 college will this year come into personal 

 touch with fully seventy-five thousand 

 farmers and farmers' wives, or more than 

 one out of every three farmers in Kansas. 

 It is possible that it will soon be found 

 necessary to offer courses in agriculture 

 and home economies of varying lengths in 

 different parts of the state, to accommodate 

 the increasing demand for instruction in 

 these subjects on the part of those who can 

 not leave home. 



Outlying Experiments.— It is not suffi- 

 cient to conduct experiments at Manhattan 

 and Fort Hays and call the problems finally 

 settled in accordance with the teachings of 

 these results. Kansas is a large state, with 

 a great variety of soils, and great variation 

 in rainfall and in plant and animal adapta- 

 tion. As soon as funds for this purpose 

 can be provided and the work so organized 

 that it may proceed in each case along lines 

 that are fairly certain to yield profitable 

 results, there should be instituted system- 

 atic tests or experiments in everj' county 

 in the state. This will be found profitable 

 not only because of the exact information 

 secured, but by reason of the greater con- 

 fidence which the farmers will have in the 

 results, because they were secured under 

 conditions which they recognize as identical 

 with their own. 



Then, these experimental fields may also 

 serve an exceedingly valuable educational 

 purpose, by being so planned that they 

 demonstrate some point in agricultural 



practise of especial importance to the com- 

 munity in which they are established. 



Farm practise is developing at so rapid 

 a rate and so many methods are being 

 found to succeed well under one set of con- 

 ditions and not under another, that for the 

 individual farmer to try, at his own ex- 

 pense, aU that good judgment indicated 

 might be worth trying, would mean that his 

 farm must become an experiment station 

 instead of a business enterprise. It is, 

 therefore, the business of the state and fed- 

 eral government to put these things to the 

 test for him, and under conditions closely 

 approximating his own. 



State Surveys.— For the first time in our 

 history, we have become interested in the 

 conservation of our resources. A young 

 nation, like a young person, is proverbially 

 profligate of its resources. Ours has been 

 a waste of the resources of soil and forest 

 and stream that is without parallel in the 

 history of the world. This waste has been 

 largely due to improper systems of farm- 

 ing, and can not continue another century 

 without bringing ruin to America's basic 

 industry. Under the teachings of institu- 

 tions like this, larger returns may be se- 

 cured without depleting the soil than are 

 now secured under a system of land spolia- 

 tion. This is a matter of concern not only 

 to the landowner, but to the whole of so- 

 ciety, since the future welfare of our 

 cities and factories and churches and 

 schools is directly dependent upon the 

 returns from the farm. 



"We are now in a frame of mind to con- 

 sider methods of checking this waste. The 

 first step is to take account of stock. The 

 Kansas landowner needs to know what 

 types of soil he has, what amount of plant 

 food each contains, to what each is best 

 adapted, and how it may be managed to 

 yield the largest return without having its 

 productiveness diminished. The college 



