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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 747 



This new demand, supplementing that 

 for men to conduct agricultural research 

 in the experiment stations, is creating, in 

 turn, a demand upon the university which 

 is to-day met only in an utterly inadequate 

 degree ; and which has forced the Associa- 

 tion of American Agricultural Colleges 

 and Experiment Stations to provide in a 

 slight measure for the need, by the estab- 

 lishment of a short, itinerary, periodic 

 graduate school of agriculture. It is obvi- 

 ous that one can no more lift himself by 

 his boot-straps than that this entire situa- 

 tion can be met satisfactorily without an 

 immediate, adequate and wisely planned 

 agricultural educational movement ema- 

 nating from the university. It must give 

 inspiration to the college, the college to the 

 Mgh school and normal school, and these 

 in turn to the elementary school teacher. 



The national government is now lending 

 its aid to collegiate training in agriculture 

 and to agricultural research, but no ade- 

 quate step has been or is now being taken 

 in the United States to provide the funds 

 for adequately meeting this new demand 

 upon the university. The recent organiza- 

 tion of the Graduate School of Applied 

 Science at Harvard University is in line 

 with a gradually growing movement in a 

 number of agricultural colleges and uni- 

 versities. 



Private munificence has been wisely lav- 

 ished to provide university training in the- 

 ology, medicine, pure science and law, but 

 as regards agriculture the situation is that 

 of neglect. It is indeed surprising that 

 the great basic industry upon which all 

 others depend, which would seemingly be 

 one of the first to receive support, has been 

 almost utterly ignored, neglected or for- 

 gotten by our wealthy philanthropists. 

 There are also certain great agricultural 

 research problems like respiration calorim- 

 eter studies which are so complex in their 

 nature, so exacting as to expense and the 



period of years necessary in which to reach 

 definite results, that the experiment sta- 

 tions can at present hardly grapple with 

 them, and still meet the other urgent de- 

 mands which are made upon them; hence 

 it is hoped that for such work satisfactory, 

 permanent provision may soon be made. 

 In this regard absolutely abstract research 

 has been placed, through private munifi- 

 cence, on a far better plane. In fact this 

 country now needs and awaits the advent 

 of men who feel that these great problems, 

 which by their final sokition give promise 

 of direct or indirect aid to agriculture, are 

 also worthy of endowed support ; and espe- 

 cially that provision for high-grade uni- 

 versity training, in its application to agri- 

 culture, and of a pension system for experi- 

 ment station research workers by which 

 they may be placed on a par with the 

 teachers, would be among the most funda- 

 mental, far-reaching and humanitarian 

 projects for endowment. 



Sufficient has been said to emphasize the 

 great extent of the present movement for 

 agricultural education and to show that 

 somehow and from somewhere must come 

 far greater support of highly complex agri- 

 cultural research and especially of agricul- ■ 

 tural training of a university grade. In- ■ 

 deed, the movement from below is so gen- 

 eral, so impulsive, and so powerful, that 

 the situation from the standpoint of the 

 university can not be much longer over- 

 looked. It becomes important, therefore, 

 to consider the place of agricultural chem- 

 istry in the university plan. In this con- 

 nection it is of historic interest to recall 

 that the American student who looked over 

 the field of agricultural chemistry in this 

 country twenty years ago could learn of 

 but five or six teachers of this subject, most 

 of whom were giving only collegiate courses 

 of instruction which were often only par- 

 tially commensurate with the university 

 courses then ofllered in Germany. Indeed 



