12 [ ASSEMBLY 
Special effort has also been made to instruct visitors, by showing 
them carefully the data upon which results were formulated, and 
careful attention has been invariably paid to all suggestions. This 
meeting with practical farmers has been of advantage to us as well as 
to them. We have thereby been enabled to become acquainted with 
their wants and their views, while abundant hints of how to do, as 
well as what to do, have been received by us. Certainly there is no 
means superior to those which come from the association between the 
officers of the station and the farmers themselves to enable us to keep 
abreast of the times and to give to us that vigorous enthusiasm which 
leads to the most direct methods of obtaining results. We desire the 
farmers to understand that every intelligent visitor we have is a posi- 
tive benefit, and that we never begrudge the time necessary for cour- 
teous entertainment. 
In selecting subjects for investigation which are practical, rather 
than scientific, we deem we have fulfilled an important duty. ‘There 
is no more reason that science should not be studied in its bearing 
upon practical and economic affairs than there is that practical and 
economic affairs should be studied without the aid that science has to 
offer. Yet we would not be understood as in any way attempting 
popularity by decrying science. It is only when methods approved 
by science are applied to agricultural investigation that we may hope 
for adequate response to systematicstudy. ‘T’ostudy agriculture with- 
out the aids that science furnishes would be as profitable to the 
worker as the building of a railroad without preliminary survey would 
be to the stockholder. The field for agricultural study is very exten- 
sive. ‘There is room in it for pure science ; and there is also abun- 
dant room for the science that applies to practical affairs. This Station, 
however, was organized in the interests of the latter rather than of the 
former, and our duty compels us to leave to others that agreeable and 
fascinating work of seeking for knowledge for its own sake, so long as 
the equally good knowledge which relates to practical problems is 
pressing and is pressed upon us for acceptance. How well we have 
acted up to our own idea of duty, this report will determine. 
In using seeds purchased from seedsmen we were continually subject 
to the liability of a mixture of varieties in the same seed package, and 
to defects in the vitality of the seeds used. ‘To avoid these inconveni- 
ences in future we shall, as far as possible, use seeds of our own saving, 
by which means we can, through the proper selection of normal plants 
as seed producers, and through the preservation of seeds of known age 
and ripeness, be able to determine whether vitality of seed. varies with 
varieties of a species, and as well the normal character of varieties as 
regards productive qualities. Thus, when we noted this year that but 
one Harly York cabbage out of nineteen plants came to head, we could 
only give the figures as those of our trial, but we cannot feel assured 
whether this failure in heading was an accident of the seed used, or 
whether peculiar to the variety. 
Our whole experience this year justifies the reflection that our seeds- 
men scarcely exercise the proper care in the sending out of their seeds, 
and in assuring quality in their varieties, So general does this remark 
seem that we are not justified in naming defects in the seed obtained 
from individual seedsmen. We may, however, remark that our ex-. 
