450 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1109 



The appropriation of $250 for the beginning of 

 an experiment station has, under adviee, been care- 

 fully husbanded by me after the failure of the 

 appropriations asked of the last legislature, in 

 order to insure the continuation of the home work. 



Fortunately the legislature of 1877 gave him 

 $5,000 for two years and the legislature of 

 1879 gave $5,000 a year for two years, of which 

 he says, in his report for 1880, " it barely en- 

 ables us to pay running expenses, and farther 

 improvement and increase of scope will be 

 impossible " ; for he then had half a dozen 

 field and laboratory assistants to provide for. 

 At the same time, however, that his local 

 patrons and employers were wondering how 

 Hilgard could use $2,500 for expense money, 

 the United States gave him not less than 

 $25,000 to spend in his cotton work. 



The stand taken by Hilgard with reference 

 to the dignity and pedagogical value of agri- 

 cultural science, while so many institutions, 

 now great, were in their formative periods, 

 was recognized as sound throughout this 

 country and beyond. Set forth in his early 

 reports, it exercised a profound influence. The 

 proper relation of agricultural practise to 

 agricultural science, as factors in educational 

 effort; the educational distinction between 

 labor performed for enlightenment and labor 

 prescribed to beget a liking for labor; the 

 place of both the art and science of agriculture 

 in a university of higher learning, when both 

 are handled ably for instructional purpose — 

 these were among his fundamental conten- 

 tions, upholding them through many contro- 

 versies, and his victory is seen in their entry 

 into the regular curricula of all of the newer 

 institutions of learning and their pursuit by 

 older institutions established upon other stand- 

 ards of learning before the existence of these 

 educational factors was dreamed of as worthy 

 and capable. 



Hilgard's strategic diversion of 1879 to 1883 

 was one of the brightest and most effective 

 movements of his career. On the basis of his 

 work in Mississippi he was requested by the 

 director of the census of 1880 to take full 

 charge of the cotton investigations for that 

 census and to do something greater for the 



cotton industry than was ever done before and 

 he was promised funds for inquiry, investiga- 

 tion, laboratory work and whatever else he 

 deemed necessary to get at the fundamental 

 facts and principles connected with cotton 

 growing in the United States. He reviewed 

 the subject as a whole and in divisions, studied 

 each cotton state and finally, after four years 

 of work, produced in two volumes his report 

 upon the cotton industry of the United States, 

 a lasting benefit to all cotton-producing states. 

 This report, in two quarto volumes, was a 

 force in engrafting original research upon the 

 instructional work, established through the 

 educational land-grant law of Morrill, by the 

 enactment of the Hatch law for state experi- 

 ment stations in all states. 



The results of Hilgard's labors are in the 

 warp of California's first half -century of intel- 

 lectual and industrial life. He was quick to 

 see his opportunities for public service, to 

 recog'nize his duty therein and he was master- 

 ful and tireless in pursuit of it. He was bold 

 in conquest of truth and fearless in his use of 

 it for the interest of mankind, seizing gladly 

 the smallest fact from research and pressing 

 it to the humblest service but always per- 

 ceiving and enforcing the relations of both 

 the fact and the service to the broadest inter- 

 ests of his states and of his fellow men. Thus 

 all came to know him as richly wise, imswerv- 

 ingly true, and deeply patriotic and hmnan- 

 istic — a man whose thinking was as clear and 

 whose motives were as unselfish as his service 

 of them was forceful and effective. 



E. J. WiCKSON 



IJNrvERsiTY OP California 



THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF EUGENE 

 WOLDEMAR HILGARD 



Eugene W. Hilgaed accepted the position 

 of assistant state geologist of Mississippi in 

 1855, at the age of twenty-two, but was well 

 equipped for scientific investigations of any 

 kind. He had spent his early boyhood days 

 on a farm, giving his spare hours to the read- 

 ing of standard works on chemistry and bot- 

 any and in making collections of plants and 

 insects; then in later years had completed his 



