928 



SCIENCE 



[N.S. Vol. XXVII. No. 702 



done at experiment stations that does not 

 eventually redound to tlie good of the farmer, 

 but, at the same time, I would have upper- 

 most in mind v^hat really benefits the farmer, 

 not so much what he thinks benefits him. 

 Institutions of this kind are organized for the 

 purpose of deriving far-reaching conclusions, 

 and the schemes to be worked out should be 

 determined by those who have made a deep 

 study of agriculture in its broadest sense, 

 and not by those who have had handed down 

 to them the ideas they daily put in practise. 

 Agriculture is the greatest of all vocations, at 

 least of all industries, and yet it is only re- 

 cently that science has been directed along 

 agricultural lines, and it has probably been 

 well for the work that the above conditions 

 have existed. In the first place, there were 

 few men who were prepared to undertake the 

 work, and, second, appropriations have been 

 hard to get. 



It is now twenty years since the organiza- 

 tion of experiment stations, and a new era 

 of progress and possibility is upon us and we 

 should dismantle ourselves of the old robes 

 of skepticism in regard to agricultural sci- 

 ences. Some of the stations have always had 

 high ideals, many of them have been border- 

 ing the scientific phase of agriculture for a 

 good many years, but others have always held 

 and still hold to the idea that they must busy 

 themselves trying to satisfy the immediate 

 demands of an uneasy public. Stations that 

 do not busy themselves with the fundamental 

 laws of agricultural science may always expect 

 to have this kind of work to do ; for the farmer 

 finds out what is wrong before such stations 

 are able to give out something more prom- 

 ising. 'In that case the farmer is the leader 

 instead of the stations. 



This condition was seen and fully contem- 

 plated by Mr. Adams, when he introduced a 

 bin to increase the annual appropriations for 

 the national and state experiment stations, 

 else the special clause providing for a specific 

 phase of station work would never have been 

 incorporated in the bill. If all stations had 

 conformed to the high ideal that some of them 

 have always maintained, it would never have 

 occurred to him that the funds must be set 



aside for research work. He knew as we all 

 know that the practical side of station work 

 is indispensable, not only to the good of the 

 farmers of the states, but to the theoretical 

 work as well, and feeling, as I have intimated 

 before, that many of them were depending 

 altogether on this phase of the work, he set 

 about to raise the standard by specifying that 

 the new funds must be used to prosecute orig- 

 inal research work, and to make his purpose 

 carry he had the funds put into the hands 

 of the Secretary of Agriculture, whose duty 

 it is to see that the said funds shall not be 

 misspent. 



By virtue of these limitations, it becomes 

 the duty of those who enter into the work to 

 confine themselves strictly to the scientific 

 phase of agricultural work. If they carry out 

 the original purpose of the funds, they must 

 in the course of their work hit upon the basic 

 or fundamental principles that in the end 

 determine real progress. The day of experi- 

 mentation must yield to the inevitable day of 

 investigation, and the investigator must not 

 undertake a diversity of projects, but work 

 along narrow lines that he may be fully able 

 to concentrate his mind on the purely tech- 

 nically scientific phase of his work. In fact, 

 there is little room to doubt that a project is 

 admitted under the provision of the funds, 

 only as the investigator interprets it from the 

 standpoint of science. It may have practical 

 application, but must be scientific. It may be 

 work on old themes, but it must be a new 

 phase of them. 



In view of the considerable confusion 

 brought about by the use of the Adams Fund 

 at the stations, I wish to emphasize that no 

 greater mistake can be made than to preach 

 immediate application of results from those 

 who are working under it. This was not con- 

 templated by Mr. Adams. Farmers have to 

 be educated gradually to an acceptance of any 

 valuable scientific truth in agriculture, and to 

 persuade them that they should keep abreast 

 with men of science is to demoralize them in 

 the extreme, and fill their minds with skep- 

 ticism. When larger truths have become feas- 

 ible, the farmers will be the ones to reap the 

 benefit, and iintil they have become feasible. 



