48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALBANY MEETING 



mind. It was a force in engrafting original research on the instructional 

 work, established through the educational land-grant law of Morrill, by the 

 enactment of the Hatch law for experiment stations in all States; and when 

 those institutions were being developed in the latter 80's, Hilgard and the 

 research establishment which he had created in California were the accepted 

 prototypes of men, means, and methods. 



"Nor was he simply a national exemplar in his line. When he went abroad 

 for a short time in 1892, after seventeen years of tireless and most productive 

 work in California, he was received with unusual tokens of honor and esteem, 

 and by many learned and scientific bodies was prevailed on to describe his 

 ways of work and the notable differences, which he was first to formulate, of 

 conditions in arid and humid climates in their scientific and economic aspects." 



Dr. E. H. Loughriclge, from 1871 on the pupil, assistant, colleague, 

 and intimate friend of Doctor Hilgard, was more intimately associated 

 with his work in California than an}^ one else, and no better summary of 

 this work can be given than by quoting the following passages from 

 Loughridge's contribution to the Hilgard memorial exercises held at the 

 University of California in 1916. 



Immediately after he went to Berkeley, in 1875, Doctor Hilgard estab- 

 lished on the university grounds the first agricultural experiment station 

 in the United States, and 



• "Prior to 1860 he had established several outlying substations for the study 

 of soil and culture problems peculiar to the several agricultural divisions of 

 the State, which are marked largely by differences in climatic conditions." 



"The most important of these was the one at Tulare, in the San Joaquin 

 Valley, established for the purpose of studying alkali problems, in which he 

 took special interest and pride." 



"Among his California activities there stand out prominently his studies on 

 humid and arid soils, in which he was the first to point out their differences 

 in depth and in physical and chemical characteristics ; he was the first to ex- 

 plain endurance of drouth by culture crops in arid soils and why sandy soils 

 are among the most productive in the arid region and the least so in the 

 humid. He was interested not only in the soils of the United States, but in 

 those of foreign countries and was constantly on the alert for new data." 



"His successful researches into the cause and occurrence of alkali salts, 

 their effect on vegetation, and especially the methods to be used in their neu- 

 tralization and the reclamation of the land in which they occur, are well 

 known. He was the first to enter this field, and the results of his experiments 

 have been extensively quoted and his bulletins published in other countries 

 where alkali lands exist." 



"While Professor Hilgard was not the first to make a soil survey or a chem- 

 ical analysis of the soil, he was the first to interpret the results of analyses in 

 their relation to plant life and productiveness. He was also the first to main- 

 tain that the physical properties of a soil are equal in importance to the 

 chemical in determining the cultural value," 



