OOTOBEE 29, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



603 



eyen a chemist. It should be said that only 

 the chemists of the experiment stations 

 would be eligible to these awards, but there 

 are several hundred of them and a large 

 number have now had ample time in which 

 to establish the character of their work. 



In this connection I wish to state, very 

 emphatically, that I am not decrying all the 

 scientific work of the stations. By no 

 means. A great deal of it is of a high char- 

 acter and is becoming more and more so as 

 time goes on. Some stations have mani- 

 fested a marked improvement in the char- 

 acter of their work during the past four or 

 five years, and it is to be hoped that our 

 station will not be obliged to take a back- 

 ward step. Why do you suppose our men 

 of science in the agricultural experiment 

 stations are not found among the fellows of 

 the Royal Society of London or among the 

 foreign members of the French Academy? 

 Why is it that they are not in evidence in 

 the Berlin Academy, or even in our own 

 National Academy of Sciences? 



The twenty-two men recently chosen on 

 the Naval Advisory Board are essen- 

 tially research men and inventors. The 

 two men chosen by the American Chemical 

 Society, Dr. Whitney and Dr. Baekeland 

 are research chemists in the true sense of 

 the word. It is obvious that the experi- 

 ment station men have not yet risen to the 

 rank entitling them to places in the notable 

 segregations of the truly scientific men of 

 the world. Exceptions of course must be 

 made to the representations in "Who's 

 Who?" and to pay-as-you-enter classi- 

 fications. 



There are now nearly seventeen hundred 

 agricultural experiment-station workers in 

 this country and their combined productiv- 

 ity is something enormous when quantity is 

 considered. Their opportunities for pro- 

 ducing genuine and fundamental research 

 eould be as great as those of the professors 



of the larger universities if they had the 

 training and the concept of the deeper 

 problems of nature and were not led astray 

 by the tyro and dilettante who is invari- 

 ably imbued with the get-rich-quick idea, 

 although he uses the much more elegant and 

 suggestive term "practical." The cry in 

 the experiment stations is for something 

 practical, not realizing that the most funda- 

 mental is the most practical in the long 

 run. 



Our stations are organized to benefit the 

 farmer, but when we accord to the farmer 

 the privilege of deciding what work is prac- 

 tical and what is not, and what problems 

 should be undertaken and what ones should 

 be dropped, we are committing a grave 

 error. The pedestrian journeying along 

 the road may properly express his opinion 

 about the desirability of having a bridge 

 built to span the stream but when he pro- 

 poses to direct the engineer regarding the 

 location or type of the bridge or even re- 

 garding the feasibility of having a bridge 

 built at all, he is overstepping his bounds; 

 but no more so than when the farmer frames 

 the problem for the research man. Valu- 

 able suggestions regarding desired results 

 may often be obtained from the layman, but 

 the trained expert is the best judge whether 

 or not the "practical" problem is prac- 

 ticable. 



The fact that the experiment-station 

 worker must cater to public sentiment is 

 one of the main reasons for his failure to 

 occupy the respected places in truly scien- 

 tific circles. It is to be hoped that the 

 farmer will acquire a greater degree of 

 tolerance for the technical, the obscure and 

 to him unintelligible, and when that day 

 comes we hope that this admirable branch 

 of science will be elevated to its proper 

 place. Then, truly scientific men who have 

 had the misfortune to become enmeshed in 

 the agricultural experiment stations will 



