EXPERIMENT STATION WORK 
In clearing away the useless popular notions, the scientists 
themselves have not been free from their influence, espcially 
when they seemed to agree with accepted scientific theory. 
Many, indeed, are the ’coons in poultry science that have been 
seen because they were being looked for. 
As a partial explanation it should be said that men avail- 
able for scientific poultry work are very scarce. Poultry 
keepers schooled in the University of the Poultry Yard have 
no conception of scientific methods, and would explain experi- 
mental results by a theory that would fail to fit elsewhere. 
The available scientists on the other hand are seldom poultry- 
men. 
Among the first men to take up animal husbandry work of 
all kinds, were the veterinarians. For years the only poultry 
publications put out by the U. S. Government were by veterin- 
arians. These dust covered volumes with their five color 
plates of the fifty-seven varieties of tapeworms, still rest on 
the shelves of public libraries, a monument to the time when 
the practical poultryman knew only things that weren’t so, 
and the sicientific poultryman knew only things that were use- 
less. 
The first general law that all experimenters should know 
and the ignorance of which has caused and still causes the 
waste of the major portion of experimental brains and money, 
we will call the “Law of Chance.” Let the reader who is not 
familiar with such things take two pennies and toss them 
upon the table. They are both heads up. He tosses them 
again, one comes heads, the other tails. The third time re- 
peats the second. The fourth both come tails. The law of 
chance says this is correct. Heads should appear 25 per cent., 
tails 25 per cent., and mixed 50 per cent. of the time. Now 
let the reader try this in a lot of twelve tosses. Does it prove 
the law? Try it again. Are all lots alike? Now pitch a hun- 
dred times, then pitch pennies all day. By night the law will 
be so near proven that the experimenter will be willing to 
concede its validity. 
Now suppose the lots of twelve tosses, each were lots of 
twelve hens, one Plymouth Rocks, the other Wyandottes, or 
one fed corn and the other wheat. The law of chance clearly 
proves that the larger number of unites, the nearer the theo- 
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