June 21, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



603 



they are sick or wounded they will receive 

 as good care, as high a class of medical and 

 surgical service, as could possibly be ob- 

 tained in civil life. This is true because 

 our best men have gone into the medical 

 service, and the government is providing 

 the medical departments with every facility 

 necessarj- to give our soldiers the best med- 

 ical care. 



THE LABELLING OF FAIR EXHIBITS 



AS AN AID TO AGRICULTURAL 



PRODUCTION 



In past years and even at this time, when 

 increased conservation and production of food 

 is so desirable, the people of North America 

 invest a tremendous sum in over 2,000 county 

 fairs and similar agricultural exhibitions. 

 This investment loses much of its effective- 

 ness — perhaps more than half — because of 

 lack of labels, scarcity of labels or imperfect 

 labels. 



By labels is not meant such labels as are 

 used in the great museums where too much 

 attention is given to the specimen and too 

 little to the desirable effect of the exhibit or 

 the effect of the label, if it be present at all. 

 Over sixteen years' experience in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, perhaps the 

 largest museum on the continent, convinced 

 me that useful labels are more rare and more 

 valuable than the exhibits. 



At the Central Canada Exhibition in Ot- 

 tawa was once exhibited a very interesting 

 hand-woven fabric apparently of farmer handi- 

 work, but close examination of the exhibit 

 failed to reveal where it was made, by what 

 class of people, its value, or where such fabrics 

 could be obtained. Otherwise intelligent peo- 

 ple have been known to lay in a stock of fall 

 fruit, part of which spoiled before the winter 

 ■was over. A label at the fair on fruit preser- 

 vation would have saved this loss. When one 

 views the machinery at a fair he is often at a 

 loss to know for what it may be used. Many 

 similar examples could be given. Probably 

 more than half the people who visit a fair 

 grope their way through without understand- 



ing many of the exhibits. They go as a lark, 

 but could learn at the same time things that 

 would make them more useful to the whole 

 country. An additional investment, small in 

 proportion to the present whole cost of fairs, 

 would change them from amusements or casual 

 advertisements to educational institutions re- 

 sulting in diffusing the best agricultural 

 knowledge discovered by the government ex- 

 perts. 



An additional investment of less than one 

 cent per exhibit would provide suitable edu- 

 cational labels and probably double, if not 

 multiply the productive national value of the 

 fairs many fold. It is not proposed that each 

 fair should write and print its own labels. 

 This would mean that the ignorant or least 

 skilled would write the labels, whereas we 

 have intelligent and skilled specialists in 

 provincial or national agricultural depart- 

 ments, as well as in agricultural colleges and 

 experiment stations. It would also mean that 

 there would be as many labels written as there 

 are fairs, a tremendous overlapping of effort 

 and expense, while one writing would do for 

 all. 



It is not advocated to label each exhibit, for 

 instance each cow, but to label each breed. 

 In the case of large exhibits with many in- 

 dividuals, as of Clydesdale horses, one label 

 would be put at each end of each row of stalls 

 and perhaps in one or more places between. 



Perhaps labels should not be made in this 

 particular way for everything in every fair, 

 but for those things that are common to most 

 of the fairs. One could take the list of ex- 

 hibits at a typical fair and make a label for 

 e^ch class of exhibits, such as Holstein cows, 

 Plymouth "Rock chickens, northern spy apples. 

 Hubbard squash and windmills. They would 

 not be advertisements for any firm. 



Each label shoidd be written by the leading 

 expert in that particular sort of exhibit — 

 breed of cattle, swine, bee, wheat, iwtato, apple, 

 gang plow, threshing machine, windmill, 

 motor, or what not. This label should be 

 criticised by many other experts and then re- 

 written by a man who is an expert in inter- 

 preting facts to the people — to farmers and 



