Miscellaneous, 



450 



[November, 1910. 



will probably arise from the opposition 

 of the artisans themselves, who care 

 little about education and are averse 

 from abandoning the free and improv- 

 ident life they have always led. In 

 framing a policy the provision for a 

 suitable education must come first. It 

 must appeal to the people aud attract 

 them by direct reference to their every 

 day life and, above all, it must not be 

 regarded as the first rung of the ladder 

 which will elevate a few above their 

 fellows, its object should be to raise the 

 mass from their lethargy and ignorance 

 to a higher level, whence in due time a 

 fresh start may be made. For the 

 present, possibly for a long time to come, 

 we must look to the educated classes, 

 as we now understand that term, to 

 furnish the men who will lead the 

 industrial groups and bands which it 

 should be a primary duty to organise. 



(To be continued). 



THE VALUE OP AGRICULTURAL 

 EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



(Prom the Agricultural Neivs, Vol. IX., 

 No, 216, August, 1910.) 



Attention has been drawn recently 

 to the fact that the properly conducted 

 agricultural experiment station derives 

 its value chiefly in two ways : from its 

 use in providing assistance of more 

 immediate moment to the practical 

 agriculturist, and from the general 

 results that are obtained, by its means, 

 through the carrying on of research. 

 The true nature and extent of this value 

 are often imperfectly realised, or indeed 

 ignored, and it is the purpose of the 

 present article to indicate, to some 

 extent at least, wherein the existence 

 of this value lies. 



The broad aim of the experiment 

 station is to provide assistance by means 

 of discovery and acquisition. The dis- 

 covery, or the thing acquired, may be of 

 a concrete or an abstract nature. That 

 is to say the work that is carried on 

 may lead to the recognition of useful 

 principles in relation to its problems, or 

 to the production of actual agricultural 

 apparatus, strains of plants, etc., which 

 will be beneficial to those whom its 

 labours are intended to serve. As 

 regards the methods of acquisition, the 

 knowledge of what is being done at 

 other stations may have advantage 

 taken of it by the application of princip- 

 les that have been formulated at these, 

 or the acquirement from them of actual 

 things that will be of use in the district 



for which its efforts are made, such as, 

 again, valuable mechanical aids in agri- 

 culture, and new plants. Without an 

 experiment station, the worth of results 

 obtained by others cannot receive proper 

 consideration, in reference to the condi- 

 tions which obtain in a particular 

 locality, and those who are resident 

 there have no one to advise them when 

 attention is being given to proposals to 

 introduce new plant, machinery, or 

 other substantive means of assistance. 



Several ways exist in which the work 

 carried on at an expriment station may 

 give rise to discoveries that may or may 

 not be of direct use, but everyone of 

 which has its value sootier or later. The 

 most general way in which these dis- 

 coveries are made is as the result of 

 direct search ; they sometimes occur in 

 an accidental way, while this search is 

 being made. In other cases they arise 

 from the reconsideration of old work 

 in the light of that which has been done 

 more lately. Finally, it is not unimpor- 

 tant that they be made through the 

 following suggestions that have come 

 into being, through the work that is 

 done at other stations. 



Proper recognition of these matters, 

 and of other circumstances that have 

 already received consideration in the 

 articles of which mention has been 

 made, will make it evident that the 

 experiment station must never be made 

 a means for the performance of hasty 

 and ill-considered work, and that such 

 an institution must never be regarded as 

 a factor of temporary importance, in 

 the agricultural history of a community. 

 Agriculture, regarded as a science, is 

 new, so that time is required before its 

 problems will be outlined as definitely, 

 or the knowledge concerning it made as 

 systematic, as is the case with the older 

 sciences. It is not sufficient to give time 

 merely for the discovery of empirical 

 results, important though these may 

 be in their particular application ; the 

 explanation of them must be provided 

 so that they may become a means of 

 adding to the sum of knowledge that is 

 useful, in the widest sense. 



There are other, more restricted, ways 

 in which it is made evident that attempts 

 to solve agricultural problems in periods 

 of time that are insufficient for their 

 proper study, will lead to work of 

 inferior value, or even to that which is 

 useless. The results of such labour are, 

 in any case, very likely to be unsatis- 

 factory, and the knowledge of their 

 application incomplete, so that if they 

 are to become of value, the work will 

 have to be revised— a contingency that 



