44 
Keport of the Director of the 
While upon the subject of variation we may note that variegated 
leaved strawberries are recorded among species by Tournefort, 1700; 
the gold-striped and the silver-striped leaved among varieties by 
Mawe in 1778. 
The wood and alpine strawberries, Fragaria vesca, as also F. vivid is, 
the green, and F. elatior, the Hautbois, are European. The Virginian, 
F. Virginiana, is American and reached Europe in 1629. F. Chiloense, 
the Chilian, reached Europe in 1712. 
Expeeiment Stations. 
Six years' experience in directing an actual experiment station seems 
to make it incumbent upon me, now upon the point of severing my 
relations, to speak somewhat of the ideal experiment station, and this 
I shall do very briefly, not in the spirit of complaint from lost or unap- 
preciated opportunity, but as formulating experience gained in the 
hope that others may be thereby benefited. 
The work at a station carries with it much responsibility on the part 
of the direction. In order to be efficient, this direction should be single, 
and should be so arranged that responsibility for success or for failure 
should be placed definitely where it rightly belongs. The organization 
of the station is faulty in this respect, and I can speak of it the more 
willingly as my own personal relations with the Board of Control have 
been of the friendliest character from the beginning to the end of my 
service, and no criticisms of my own can apply to any individual mem- 
ber of our Board, but only to the system which they represent. There 
should be no board of control over any station, understanding the 
term to imply the relations which are now indicated by law, but the 
director should have the sole management and the sole responsibility. 
The functions of a board of control should be that of a board of super- 
vision, a position which our board of control have wisely and properly 
taken, who should have sole control over the financial arrangements 
and over the appointment or the displacement of a director. If the 
director in his management does not meet the views of the board as to 
the policy which should prevail, or to their ideas of efficiency, then the 
director should be removed and another person in harmony with the 
policy of the board should be appointed. But so long as the director 
retains his appointment he should have full power to secure his 
own employes and to carry out his own ideas of work untrammeled 
and unhampered by any superior direction. This course is the proper 
one, because the character of the work which an experiment station is 
expected to accomplish must depend largely for its efficiency upon a 
unity of direction which cannot be expected to be obtained under 
