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5 ra 5: 
PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 
To ie Board of Control of the New York Agricultural Beperiment 
tation : 
GENTLEMEN —I herewith present my second annual report, em- 
bracing the period included within the year 1883. 
The year, upon the whole, has been a favorable one, despite some 
damages which occurred to crops in the garden from the excessive 
rain-fall. As the object of the station work is rather to discover the 
whys and the wherefores than to raise crops, it is to be hoped that 
failures may be at times as instructive as successes, and certain it is 
that the success of our work is not to be measured by the crops raised, 
but rather from the information secured and rendered available for 
practice. 
- Your director would call attention again to his interpretation of the 
duties required of his office. '‘T'he object of the station is to discover, 
verify and disseminate. In order to accomplish this purpose it is nec- 
essary that the work should be varied, according to its character, so as 
to accomplish results in a speedy, certain and accurate manner, For 
the purpose of discovery, clues to direct our research must first be 
obtained, and then wisely planned trials and close observation must 
take their part. It is in this line of investigation that the littles as- 
sume such large importance, and where matters which at first thought 
appear trivial, as study proceeds, fall into line, and tend to explain | 
and suggest practices which must in the end be deemed of practical 
concern to the farmer. ‘To discover even one empirical law, and to 
succeed in tracing out its relations to known facts ‘would be a success 
a. y ‘indeed, and how much greater the success if the relativity of the laws 
bearing upon agricultural pursuits were clearly traced and sharply 
outlined, so as “to be made available to the worker in the barn or 
"field. Facts are oftentimes local, but the law which gives expression 







ee v 
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here. 
to these facts is general, and in so far as the station work deals with 
principles, it ceases to be local. If the hoped-for results are acquired 
peronen our effort to generalize and formulate the facts. as appre- 
~ hended, then the discoveries it may perchance be our privilege to make, 
under this interpretation, may be found as serviceable elsewhere as 
Verification, as an object for station effort, seems fully as important — 
as discovery. ‘Agricultural knowledge, so called, is too often pseudo- 
knowledge. If there is a science which can be called agricultural, 
then it must be able to endure the criticisms to which other and better 
defined sciences are exposed. If in agriculture a truth be claimed, 
_ then this claim must jbe subject to the test of verification, and if it 
Leen Doc. No. 83, ] a 
