334 
cer connected with the institution that he 
is responsible to the president for his official 
conduct, and that an appeal to the board 
can be made only in extreme cases. 
The institution will naturally be divided 
into a limited number of departments, at 
the head of each of which will be placed an 
officer competent to plan and manage the 
business of the department intrusted to his 
charge. The amount and character of the 
administrative duties which these officers 
will be called upon to discharge will vary 
with the nature of the department. The 
agricultural experiment station is by law 
to be organized asa department of the col- 
lege with which it is connected. It differs 
from the ordinary college department in 
being charged with the work of investiga- 
tion rather than instruction and in having 
definite relations with a great industry for 
whose promotion itis especially established. 
Through its correspondence, publications, 
inspection service and association with the 
farming community it has an increasing 
amount of business not immediately rela- 
ting to its investigations, but requiring spe- 
cial knowledge and skill for its successful 
discharge. To do most effective work the 
operations of the station must proceed in 
accordance with a well-matured plan which 
involves the cooperation of different mem- 
bers of the staff. So extensive and impor- 
tant has the business of the stations become 
that their proper management requires the 
time and energy of an executive officer, or 
director. In some cases it may still be pos- 
sible for the director to conduct investiga- 
tions in some special line or do a limited 
amount of teaching, but as a rule he can do 
little beyond attending to administrative 
duties. In a number of institutions pru- 
dential reasons of various kinds have led to 
the combination of the offices of president 
and director. Whatever justification there 
may have been for this in the past there is 
little excuse for it in the present. The du- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8. Vou. XIII. No. 322. 
ties of a college president are too multifold 
and onerous to permit his giving much at- 
tention to the special needs of an experiment 
station. His directorship almost necessarily 
becomes a nominal affair and the general 
business of the station is actually performed 
by some one member of the staff or distrib- 
uted in a desultory way among a number 
of subordinate officers. This arrangement 
has not worked well and should be univer- 
sally abandoned. 
As regards the business of the station, 
the director should be clothed with a large 
measure of authority and consequent re- 
sponsibility, should plan and supervise its 
work and expenditures, and control its staft 
to such an extent as will bring them together 
to work as a unit for the promotion of the 
station’s success. The members of the staff 
should be directly responsible to the director 
on all matters relating to the station, what- 
ever their position may be in other depart- 
ments of the college, and should expect to 
transact station business through the di- 
rector rather than through the college presi- 
dent or the governing board. A proper 
independence in the conduct of investiga- 
tions, or parts of investigation, in their 
respective specialties, and just credit for 
their share in the station’s operations 
as set forth in publications or otherwise 
may, it is believed, be amply secured for the 
expert officers of the stations at the same 
time that good discipline is maintained and 
ample provision made for united effort. 
No class of men need to readjust their 
professional code to the modern require- 
ments of the organization of great scientific 
and educational enterprises more than col- 
lege professors and scientific specialists. A 
way must be found by which teaching and 
research can be conducted on a system 
which combines liberty with law. The old 
régime of the entirely independent teacher 
and investigator has passed away. The 
specialization which is simply a form of the 
