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greater will be the chance of success in any particular case if we have 

 all the ditferent station entomologists interested in some specific plan 

 to be carried out in cooperation with the national Department, which 

 ought to have better facilities for introducing specimens to foreign coun- 

 tries or to ditferent sections of our own country than any of the State 

 stations. Let us suppose that the fruit-growers of one section of the 

 country, comprising several States in area, need the benefit in their war- 

 fare against any particularly injurious insect of such natural enemy or 

 •enemies as are known to help the fruit-growers of some other section. 

 There will certainly be much greater chances of success in the carrying 

 out of any scheme of introduction, if all the workers in the one section 

 may be called upon through some central or national body to help in the 

 introduction and disposition of the desired material into the other sec- 

 tion. Or take the case of the Boll Worm investigation, already alluded 

 to. The chances of success would be much greater if the entomologists 

 in all the States interested were to give some attention to such Lepidop- 

 terous larvae as are found to be affected with contagious diseases and 

 to follow out some specific plan of cultivating and transmitting them to 

 the party or parties with whom the actual trials are entrusted. The 

 argument applies with still greater force to any international efforts. 

 I need hardly multiply instances. There is, it is true, nothing to pre- 

 Tent any individual station entomologist from requesting cooperation 

 of the other stations ; nor is there anything to prevent the national 

 Department from doing likewise ; but in all organization results are 

 more apt to flow from the power to direct rather than from mere liberty 

 to request or plead. The station entomologist may be engrossed in 

 some line of research which he deems of more importance to Che people 

 of his State and may resent being called upon to divert his energies, 

 and with no central or national power to decide upon plans of coopera- 

 tion for the common weal, we are left to voluntary methods, mutually 

 devised, and it is here that this Association can, it seems to me, most 

 fully justify its organization. And this brings me to the question of 



THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICrLTURE AND THE STATE STATIONS. 



Immediately connected with the question of cooperation is the rela- 

 tion of the iS'ational Department of Agriculture and the State experi- 

 ment stations. The relation, instead of being vital and authoritative, 

 is in reality a subordinate one. Many persons interested in the ad- 

 vancement of agriculture foresaw the advantage of having experiment 

 stations attached to the State agricultural colleges founded under the 

 Morrill act of 1862; but I think that in the minds of most persons the 

 establishment of these stations implied some such connection with 

 the National Department as that outlined in an address on agricultural 

 advancement in the United States, which I had the honor to deliver in 



