920 Agricultiieal Machinery Testing Stations. [Jan., 



experimental work or may determine the direction which 

 experimental work shall take. 



Another direction in which this accumulated experience will 

 be of service is in the preparation of reports of trials. So long 

 as every machine is practically regarded, for the purposes of the 

 trial, as a new machine and as such submitted to test, the 

 working up of the mass of detail collected will involve much 

 labour and tend to delay the publication of reports. Eesults 

 already recorded both at home and, still more, abroad will 

 serve as a standard of comparison ; they will indicate the points 

 to be stressed, and may even show where a new machine falls 

 short of a predecessor; they may also enable the detail contained 

 in current reports to be cut down to a minimum, although it 

 may be questionable whether in the long run there is much to 

 be gained in this way. 



As regards the method of drawing up reports it may be noted 

 that most of the Continental Stations are in accord with one 

 another. The question of uniformity in this respect was raised 

 at a conference of International Agricultural Engineers, the 

 first of its kind, held at Liege in 1905. At the International 

 Agricultural Congress (which included at the same time the 

 Second International Conference of Agricultural Engineers), 

 held at Vienna in 1907, Professor Josef Eezek, of that city, 

 whose services in this direction can scarcely be too highly 

 appreciated, brought before the agiicultural machinery section 

 a recommendation as to the general lines that should be 

 universally adopted in drawing up reports on tests of agricul- 

 tural machinery. This, with a few amendments, was agreed 

 to, as were also a number of other similar recommendations 

 dealing in detail with different types of machinery. These 

 instructions, though leaving open to some extent the methods 

 to be employed, lay down the lines on which scientific testing 

 should proceed and thus tend to promote uniformity. 



Every phase of applied science has its special problems, and 

 the problems of agricultural engineering are perhaps more 

 specially complicated than, and often very different from, those 

 with which other branches have to contend : — 



(1) The bulk of agricultural machinery must be capable of 

 working efficiently under a wide variety of conditions both of 

 soil and weather. 



(2) The machine must be economical in use, and to meet 

 this requirement must, broadly speaking, be produced in mass. 



