Febbuabt 16, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



153 



the farm he can not have unless he owns a 

 farm and becomes a real farmer, in which 

 case he is out of our reckoning, for obser- 

 vation shows that such men are not likely 

 to return to the public service except after 

 failure, when they are not desirable. 



It is impracticable, in the opinion of the 

 writer, to require farm experience as a con- 

 dition either of admission to college or of 

 graduation, largely because of the difficulty 

 of ascertaining and certifying what consti- 

 tutes satisfactory experience ; but it is pos- 

 sible to require actual farm experience as a 

 prerequisite to certain elective courses of 

 instruction, leaving the teacher to deter- 

 mine sufficiently for his purpose a question 

 that has no complete solution. 



It has long been the custom of the writer 

 to advise every student in agriculture who 

 has not lived a full year in actual work 

 upon a real farm to drop out in the middle 

 of the sophomore year and get it. This 

 particular time is recommended as afford- 

 ing enough scholarship to enable him to 

 look at the matter from the student's point 

 of view, as being less valuable than later 

 years, involving less embarrassment to the 

 student, and as calculated to greatly enrich 

 the laJter years of study. This is recom- 

 mended for all students of agriculture, 

 whether headed for farming or for a scien- 

 tific career ; and without at least this much 

 of actual touch with real rather than paper 

 farming, the future usefulness of the ex- 

 periment station man is far from assured. 



Much space is devoted to this subject be- 

 cause it looms large in public affairs just 

 now. In conversation the other day with 

 the most prominent Hindoo philosopher 

 now living, and whose son graduated in 

 the agricultural college of the institution I 

 represent, this extensive landholder com- 

 plained of the lack of practical knowledge 

 or even of appreciation of the conditions 

 actually and necessarily confronting the 

 Indian farmer on the part of men in the 



public service and presumably qualified to 

 advise and assist the people with an im- 

 proved solution of their very difficult prob- 

 lem. They know certain scientific facts as 

 abstractions, but to be useful somebody 

 must make the application to practise and 

 this application should be made by edu- 

 cated men. 



No conception needs to be more firmly 

 impressed upon the young agricultural sci- 

 entist at this juncture than the fact that 

 agricultural research is not a game for the 

 amusement of the players, but a real search 

 after truth to be employed in the solution 

 of one of the profoundest of human prob- 

 lems, whether regarded from the standpoint 

 of the individual farmer on his farm, or 

 of public service to a people at large — con- 

 sumer and producer alike. 



VERIFICATION 



One encouraging feature of the problem 

 is the fact that the findings of scientists are 

 to have abundant and able verification or 

 correction in the field. 



The thousands of farmers who are read- 

 ing the bulletins of the experiment sta- 

 tions, the hundreds of agricultural students 

 going from our fifty colleges and a grow- 

 ing number of schools back to the farm are 

 all putting to the test, and intelligently too, 

 under a vast variety of conditions, the 

 tentative findings of the specialist. Here 

 lie both safety and inspiration, but the 

 obligation of the scientist to be always and 

 everlastingly right is not lessened. 



The business of verification is still 

 further extended and intensified by the 

 system of local improvement associations 

 or farm bureaus, each employing an ad- 

 viser who, when competent, as he commonly 

 is and as he always ought to be, forms a 

 nucleus for really effective service in ac- 

 tually putting to the working test whatever 

 is new or promising in the business of 

 farming. Fortunately the relations be- 



