674 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 622. 



instead of half a dozen experiment stations, 

 with an aggregate income of about twenty- 

 two thousand dollars, we have, in the 

 United States proper, sixty institutions, 

 with a total income for the year 1904r-5 of 

 over one and a half million dollars. The 

 U. S. Department of Agriculture has 

 grown from a staff of one hundred and 

 eight persons and an annual income of 

 somewhat over two hundred thousand dol- 

 lars, in 1881, to a great executive depart- 

 ment with a total appropriation for the 

 present fiscal year of nearly ten million 

 dollars. The land grant colleges, too, from 

 feeble and more or less destitute 'cow col- 

 leges' have acquired an acknowledged and 

 honored position among the institutions for 

 technical education, with a total endow- 

 ment of ever eighty-one million dollars and 

 an annual income of over eleven and three 

 fourths million, with faculties aggregating 

 two thousand six hundred and seventy-two 

 and giving instruction to a total of nearly 

 sixty thousand students, of whom nearly 

 nine thousand are students of agriculture. 

 In place of a few scattered bulletins and 

 reports, issued in small editions, the ex- 

 periment stations and the Department of 

 Agriculture have become great publishing 

 agencies, and instead of its being difficult 

 to find a medium for the presentation of 

 the results of investigation, the difficulty 

 more often seems to be to find suitable 

 material for the numerous publications 

 called for by law or popular demand. 

 Finally, the organic unity of these institu- 

 tions as a class has been secured through 

 the Association of American Agricultural 

 Colleges and Experiment Stations. Surely 

 this is a magnificent record for a little over 

 a quarter of a century, and the end is not 

 yet. 



With this stupendous change in the situ- 

 ation, it might almost seem as if there were 

 no function remaining for a society like 



this. Are not all these public institu- 

 tions agencies for scientific investigation in 

 agriculture on a scale and with resources 

 such as to make a private organization 

 superfluous? Is it still necessary to pro- 

 mote agricultural science? 



Let us at the outset define our terms. 

 By agricultural science we understand that 

 body of scientific principles, known or dis- 

 coverable, which underlies and conditions 

 successful agriculture. By the promotion 

 of agricultural science, we may understand 

 the support of any measures calculated to 

 give us a deeper and more comprehensive 

 knowledge of these principles. In other 

 words, it is equivalent to the promotion of 

 scientific investigation in the field of agri- 

 culture. Investigation is scientific, as dis- 

 tinguished from practical, when it is un- 

 dertaken with the prime object of en- 

 larging our knowledge of principles and 

 without immediate reference to practical 

 application. Its incentive is the desire to 

 know more rather than the ambition to do 

 more. 



Few members of this society, certainly, 

 will question the fundamental importance 

 of such investigation. They realize the 

 truth of a recent remark by Dr. Welch,^ 

 of Johns Hopkins University, at the dedi- 

 cation of the new buildings of the Harvard 

 Medical School, that, "The same phenom- 

 enon is exhibited in (medicine) as in all 

 science that the search for knowledge with 

 exclusive reference to its application is 

 generally unrewarded." Research forms 

 the ultimate basis of all agricultural as of 

 all other progress, whether in the school, 

 the college, the correspondence course or 

 on the farm. I may be permitted to fur- 

 ther emphasize this truth by quoting the 

 words of one whose standing both as a 

 scientific investigator and as a successful 

 administrator is universally recognized." 



' Science, October 12, 1906, p. 460. 



