August g, 1889.] 



SCIENCE. 



99 



blindly : experience and good judgment combined with the rules 

 make the book useful to the farmer." 



The information contained in the almanac does not all come from 

 the agricultural experiment stations ; but a large amount of it, and 

 that which is really most useful, does come from them, and would 

 not be available without them. Nor is this all. The disposition 

 and ability to use all this are as important as the information itself. 

 This, too, is greatly aided by the scientific and educational work of 

 the stations. 



We want the same things in this country. Much of the fruit of 

 foreign research and experience can be made available for our own 

 use ; but it needs working over to fit it to our needs, and we must 

 have independent investigation of our own. 



What the American Stations are doing. 



Although the first of the American stations was established less 

 than fourteen years ago (Oct. i, 1875), and the majority of them 

 have been in operation scarcely a year, they have already done a 

 large amount of work scientifically creditable, and of the largest 

 practical value. Future publications of this office .will describe 

 what the stations are doing, and explain the practical results. 

 Only a few general statements and illustrations can be given here. 



Our stations are conducting a large amount of scientific research 

 in the laboratory and the greenhouse, and an equally large amount 

 of practical experimenting in the field, the orchard, the stable, and 

 the dairy. Some stations make a specialty of experiments with 

 home-made and commercial fertilizers ; others are endeavoring to 

 show what can be done to restore the fertility to worn-out lands ; 

 others deal largely with the culture of fruit in orchards and vine- 

 yards ; others are engaged on work relating to the composition of 

 fodders and the methods of storing them ; others are experiment- 

 ing on the feeding of animals, and still others on diseases of ani- 

 mals and plants and their cure. Irrigation receives a good deal of 

 attention in Colorado, sugar-making in Louisiana, wine-making in 

 California. At least one station is doing something in poultry- 

 raising, and another in the keeping of bees. Most of the stations 

 give attention to several lines of work. 



It is only the older stations from which we have a right to expect 

 the most satisfactory results. The oldest is the Connecticut State 

 Station. In this State the farmers are especially interested in ma- 

 nures and fertilizers, and in cattle feeding and dairying. This sta- 

 tion has naturally devoted a large share of its attention to com- 

 mercial fertilizers and feeding-stuffs. The result has been that 

 inferior materials have been driven from the markets of the State; 

 and not only that, but the farmers have been taught much con- 

 cerning the relative values of the materials they buy or produce for 

 feeding their crops and their stock, and how to utilize them most 

 advantageously. Besides this and a great deal of other practical 

 work, the station has done much to benefit other stations and the 

 agriculture of the whole country by scientific researches relating to 

 the methods of agricultural investigations. 



When the station began its work in 1875, a number of brands of 

 fertilizers then being sold in the State were analyzed, and their 

 composition compared with the selling price. It appeared, that, at 

 the rate farmers were paying, the nitrogen cost from loi- cents to 

 $1.67, and the soluble phosphoric acid from lof to 25-} cents, per 

 pound. The report of the station for 1888 shows the nitrogen in 

 the fertilizers sold in the State in that year to cost from 12 cents to 

 18 cents, and the soluble phosphoric acid from 8 cents to Si cents. 

 There were no fraudulent articles in the market. Connecticut 

 farmers pay over $200,000 yearly for the phosphoric acid of com- 

 mercial fertilizers. In this item alone the station saves more than 

 its cost. 



Before the establishment of the stations, very few farmers in 

 New England knew how to judge of the value of a guano or phos- 

 phate from its composition. Chemical terms were Greek to them. 

 Of the demands of plants and the deficiencies of soils, they had 

 ver)' little idea. Two or three years ago an advertisement of 

 a firm of fertilizer manufacturers was circulated in Connecticut 

 and in other States thereabouts. There was not a word in it about 

 the remarkable increase of crops which the fertilizers would bring ; 

 there was not a single recommendation from a farmer who had 

 put them to practical test, and learned their wonderful value ; but 



there were statements of percentages of nitrogen, of phosphoric 

 acid, soluble, reverted, insoluble, and of potash as sulphate and 

 chloride, which the fertilizers had been guaranteed by the manu- 

 facturers to contain; and alongside these were givert the percent- 

 ages which had been found in the articles as the farmers had 

 bought them and the stations in their behalf had analyzed them. 

 This is a firm of shrewd business-men, who manufacture and sell 

 fertilizers to- make money. They had found that farmers had 

 learned something of chemistry, and were buying their fertilizers 

 on a scientific basis, and that to get the most and the best trade it 

 would pay them to advertise and sell on that basis. 



At a meeting of the Connecticut State Board of Agriculture, in 

 December, 1888, one day was devoted to the experiment stations, 

 of which there are now two in the State. It has been the policy of 

 the stations to institute experiments among farmers on their own 

 farms, both for practical and for educational purposes. Some of 

 the experimenters were present, and gave accounts of their work 

 regarding the use of fertilizers, and what they had learned from it. 

 They talked of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash ; of agricul- 

 tural and commercial values of fertilizing materials ; of the feeding 

 capacities of different plants; of the differences in soils ; of the 

 adaptation of fertilizers to soil and crop ; of the relative merits of 

 commercial fertilizers and farm manures as shown by the cost, 

 composition, and effect upon quantity and quality of crop produced ; 

 of the different methods of applying manures ; and of other kin- 

 dred topics. Their statements were scientifically accurate, and 

 the practical value was so plain as to be appreciated by every one 

 who heard them. One of the station directors, a college professor, 

 remarked that he sat through the whole discussion ready to rise 

 and make explanations if they were called for, but found no occa- 

 sion to do so, and felt as though his occupation was gone. 



The men who thus united science iVith practice, who showed 

 their fellow-farmers how much of pecuniary profit as well as men- 

 tal satisfaction there was in all this work, earn their living on their 

 own farms by the labor of their own hands. They had enjoyed no 

 better education than their neighbors, but they had taken advan- 

 tage of the help of the experiment station. Such men are light- 

 houses. The value of their influence cannot be estimated. 

 Where such work is done, farming will flourish. The tendency of 

 such things is to make agriculture a profitable, elevating, and 

 attractive profession. 



The experience in other States is the same as in Connecticut. 

 A farmer in New Jersey, who has conducted some of these experi- 

 ments under the direction of the station in that State, says that the 

 simple fact that he has learned from them " that his soil lacks pot- 

 ash," which is cheaply supplied by German potash salts, has 

 already been worth $500 to him. Another farmer in the same 

 State told the writer that the information he had got from these 

 experiments had been worth more than $2,000 to him in a single 

 year. And it must be borne in mind that the subject of "fertili- 

 zers " is only one of the many which the stations are working upon. 



The first decade of the life of the North Carolina Station, which 

 was begun in 1S77, has been devoted, for the most part, to prob- 

 lems relating to the control of the trade in commercial fertilizers, 

 to the investigation of natural fertilizers (marls, phosphates, etc.) 

 and the best methods for their use, and to the education of the 

 farmers about farm manures and the best ways of saving, com- 

 posting, mixing, and usmg them. Among the valuable results due 

 directly or indirectly to this work are an increase of 14 per cent in 

 the quality of the commercial fertilizers sold in the State, and a 

 decrease in the number of acres devoted to cotton ; the establish- 

 ment of fertilizer factories and cotton-seed-oil mills in the State, 

 and the making of thousands of home-made composts by farmers 

 in every section of the State. 



The New Jersey State Station was established March 18, 18S0. 

 Its work has been both scientific and practical. The analyzing of 

 commercial fertilizers, fodders, and feeds offered in the markets of 

 the State has been largely and regularly carried on, with important 

 results in securing purity of product and honesty of dealing, and in 

 teaching the farmers of the State the real commercial and agricul- 

 tural value of these fertilizers. Field-experiments have been made 

 with a large variety of barnyard and commercial fertilizers on dif- 

 ferent crops in most of the counties of the State. 



