August 9, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



97 



to read. A series of experiment-station bulletins, of ,wliich the 

 first has been published, is intended to furnish accounts of current 

 operations of the stations, and kindred information for station 

 workers and others interested in agricultural science. 



What the Stations are for. 



" Farming is a perpetual trying of experiments with soils, ma- 

 nures, and crops ; with cattle and cattle-food ; with milk, butter, 

 and cheese; with ploughs, harrows, and harvesters; with an al- 

 most endless list of things. The most successful farmers — those 

 who get the most out of their land, their cattle, their crops, their 

 fertilizers, their implements, and their labor — are those who ex- 

 periment themselves most industriously, most skilfully, and most 

 intelligently, and who take the fullest advantage of the experiments 

 of others. The best agriculture is that which, in old countries, on 

 worn and intractable soils, has learned by long-continued and 

 varied experiment to make the gain of farming sure." 



Once the farmer made the rude tools he needed for the primi- 

 tive practice of his art. Now he employs implements and machin- 

 ery which can be made only with large capital and the highest 

 mechanical skill, and by men who make this manufacturing a 

 business. So the experiments which he can make do not meet his 

 needs to-day. Research, the finding-out of nature's secrets, the 

 discovery of the laws which underlie the right practice of agricul- 

 ture, is costly. The more useful it is to be. the greater must be the 

 outlay of money, labor, and scientific skill. Here, if anywhere, 

 wise economy calls for the best. 



Within recent times farmers, and men of science interested in 

 farming, have seen the advantage of using the resources of science 

 to improve the practice of agriculture, and have established agri- 

 cultural experiment stations. 



The object of these stations is to experiment and to teach, " to 

 make a regular business of discovery for the use of farming," " to 

 promote agriculture by scientific investigation and experiment," 

 and to diffuse as well as increase the knowledge which improves 

 farm-practice and elevates farm-life. 



Established for the benefit of agriculture, and hence of the com- 

 munity at large, the most of them connected with educational in- 

 stitutions where experience shows their work is most successfully 

 done, these stations seek answers to the questions which agricul- 

 tural practice is asking as to the tillage of the soil ; the nature and 

 action of manures; the culture of crops ; the food and nutrition of 

 domestic animals and of man ; the production of milk, butter, and 

 cheese ; the diseases of plants and animals ; and, in general, what- 

 ever the agriculturist needs to know and experimental science can 

 discover. 



But farmers have asked and have received from the stations 

 more than the help to improve their crops and their cattle and to 

 make more money. They have felt the need of something higher 

 and better for themselves, their wives, their children, their homes, 

 and their profession. In the isolation and the day-by-day struggle 

 of farm-life, the opportunity for intellectual culture is all too small. 

 Modern science reveals operations of nature in their truth and 

 beauty, and lifts us, by their contemplation, out of ourselves to 

 higher things. It finds as much that is wonderful in the growth of 

 a blade of grass as in the motions of the planets, as much of in- 

 spiration in the process by which a clod of earth gives up its fer- 

 tility as in the forces that keep the stars in their places in the uni- 

 verse. It shows us how the things we have to deal with in our 

 homeliest toil connect us, if we but understand the linking, to what 

 ' is most elevating in man's thought and hope. It helps supply that 

 food for the mind without which we starve in drudgery, but by the 

 strength of which we rise to a higher plane of life. It is for the 

 acquiring and diffusing of such knowledge, which is explained in 

 books, popularized in lectures, and disseminated in the columns of 

 the best papers ; which interests the home circle, and supplies 

 themes for farmers' institutes and conventions ; which helps farmers 

 to improve their business and increase their incomes, while it ele- 

 vates farming as a profession, and, what is by no means the least 

 of its benefits, shows the boys that it is a profession in which brains 

 can be used with profit, — it is for this, as well as for their help to 

 farm practice, that experiment stations are established, and their 

 workers are laboring with so much enthusiasm. 



What the Stations do. 



The stations make experiments in the laboratory, the greenhouse, 

 the garden, the orchard, the field, the stable, and the dairy. It is 

 doubtless safe to say that there are few subjects which the farmer 

 has to deal with in the tillage of the soil, the saving and use of ma- 

 nures, the cultivation of his crops, the care of his stock, the man- 

 agement of his dairy, and the preservation of his crops or stock 

 from insect pests and from diseases, that are not being studied, 

 directly or indirectly, by one or more agricultural experiment sta- 

 tions. 



The space here allows only a single illustration of the methods 

 and spirit of experiment-station work. Suppose the question to be 

 one of feeding. What are the effects of different kinds of fodder, 

 as hay, corn-meal, or bran, fed to cows, upon the quantity or 

 quality of the milk ? Or what feed shall we use to make better 

 pork at less cost .' Or what are the most economical rations for 

 fattening steers or working horses ? To get answers to these 

 questions, the stations make actual tests by feeding the animals and 

 noting the results. These tests differ from ordinary farm experi- 

 ments in that they are more elaborate and accurate ; in other words, 

 more scientific. 



Successful feeding is not merely a matter of so much hay, or 

 corn, or turnips, but of the nutritive ingredients which they con- 

 tain, and which the animal digests, and uses to make blood, bone, 

 muscle, fat, or milk, or uses as fuel to keep it warm and give it 

 strength for work. The chemist of the station, with the apparatus 

 of his laboratory, analyzes the material fed ; that is to say, he sep- 

 arates the food into its constituent parts, and finds just how much 

 of each nutritive substance the animal consumes. Sometimes the 

 excrement, the undigested portion, is also weighed and analyzed ; 

 so that, by comparing this with the food, he learns how much of 

 the whole food and of each ingredient the animal actually digests. 

 In experiments with milch cows, the milk is likewise weighed and 

 analyzed, and sometimes the cream is churned to see how much 

 butter it will make. In some experiments even the air the animals 

 inhale and exhale is measured and analyzed with the aid of very 

 elaborate apparatus. When the feeding-trial is done, the animal is 

 sometimes slaughtered, and the different portions likewise weighed 

 and analyzed. By such means the effects of different kinds of 

 fodder, and methods of feeding and treatment, are learned. A 

 single experiment often requires the labor of several men for weeks 

 or months. The same experiment has to be repeated again and 

 again with different animals, under different conditions. So much 

 does it cost to get reliable answers to the seemingly simple ques- 

 tions which farmers ask. • 



A recent editorial in one of our leading live-stock journals says 

 that " by the feeding-trials already conducted, especially with young 

 animals, it has been demonstrated that different feeds modify the 

 relative proportion of the different organs of the body; that the 

 blood can be increased or diminished, the liver made larger or 

 smaller, the muscular system increased or decreased in proportion 

 to the rest of the body . . . [even the bones can be made 

 weaker or stronger]. These marked differences in results are not 

 produced either by over or under feeding, but by the difference in 

 the chemical constituents of the ration. Here is a side of live- 

 stock management that is practically new to us, and its develop- 

 ment must be of the highest importance." 



It is an old saying that " the best part of the breed goes in at 

 the mouth ; " but it has been reserved for the experiment stations 

 to show how and why this is so, to give the scientific explanation 

 of the maxim, and to put stock-feeding upon a more rational, that 

 is to say, a more profitable, basis. And they are studying in like 

 manner, and with like results, the other important problems upon 

 which the future progress of our agriculture depends. 



Origin and Development of the Stations. 

 Nearly forty years ago a company of farmers joined the.mselves 

 together in the little German village of Moeckern, near the city and 

 under the influence of the University of Leipzig, called a chemist 

 to their aid, and, with later help from government, organized the 

 first agricultural experiment station. Liebig in Germany, Bous- 

 singault in France, Lawes and Gilbert in England, and other great 

 pioneers, had been blazing the path of progress for years before. 



