46 
Keport of the Director of the 
director in acting upon the lessons of universal experience, and in 
abandoning popular directions of experiment, which are as useless in 
the present as they have been in the past. 
To the public I would say that they are not interested especially in 
the work done at the station. Their interest is connected with the 
whys and wherefores of the explanations and suggestions which are 
founded upon the work which is accomplished. It can be of little 
value to the farmer to know that we have raised fifty bushels of wheat 
to the acre. The value to him of this work of ours must consist in our 
ability in explaining the conditions under which this crop was gained, 
and in formulating suggestions whereby such results can be secured 
elsewhere. Experiment is not farming, and experimental ideas are 
not farming ideas. Experiment must deal with the hard facts of science. 
Agricultural experiment means the transferring of results gained 
through science to practical applications. The direction for experi- 
mental work must be from the simple to the complex, from the known 
to the unknown, and all the conclusions which are based upon assumed 
facts gained by an opposite procedure must be viewed with suspicion. 
Fertilizer analysis for the purpose of control is not experimental 
work, and has no relations whatsoever that I can see to experimental 
work, except the bare fact of the presence of a laboratory and a 
skilled chemist at the exi3eriment station. Fortunately, our station 
has been freed from this duty of control, and therefore only such 
analyses are required to be made as seem to us proper from the cir- 
cumstances attending each collection. The farming public, however, 
not only are careless in availing themselves of such privileges as our 
duty to other work allows us to offer, but many of those who send 
samples seem to think it a hardship that they are required to exercise 
care in the sampling and the furnishing data relating to the sample. 
The demand for analysis comes more largely from agents for their 
own private benefit than from the farmers themselves. When the 
expense, both in money and time, of an analysis is considered, it seems 
perfectly proper for us to deny the gift of an analysis to individuals, 
when such analysis can have no public interest. Expressing the mat- 
ter more plainly, we should not analyze an unknown fertilizer for an 
individual, because the results are of no benefit except to the indi- 
vidual. If, however, the manufacturer, brand and analysis claimed or 
guaranteed, are furnished, then the results may become of public 
interest, and we should be justified in making the analysis. In matters 
of this kind our rules, while reasonably enacted, must be strenuously 
enforced, and no farmer should expect gratuitous work in this matter 
unless he is willing to conform to the regulations that we require. 
