No. 33. ] 23 
exist to check progress, in order that by well directed study these lim- 
itations may be carried to a further remove. It is by recognizing, not 
ignoring difficulties, that agricultural investigation is to be furthered. 
It is, however, the duty of an institution, founded and maintained by 
a public appropriation for a practical purpose, to endeavor by all 
means at command to fulfill the expectation of its supporters, and 
hence we give our greater attention to the practical element of agri- 
culture, and we have ever in mind economic applications, If our 
knowledge, or published knowledge, is deficient, we attempt by the 
recognition of the deficiency to pursue investigations which shall give 
us more command over applications in the future, and we hope as time 
passes we shall ever be better fitted for deducing from experiment such 
knowledge as shall avail to diminish waste and sccure increase in the 
practical arts included under the term husbandry. 
One of the difficulties, and a great one, which meets the investiga- 
tor, is the variation induced by the variety habits of plants or ani- 
mals. A conclusion obtained, true for the variety or breed under ob- 
servation, may not necessarily be true for another variety or breed, 
and hence it becomes of importance that we shall define with great 
care the variety or the breed from whose study such conclusions as we 
offer are derived. This fact necessitates much descriptive work on the 
part of some, and attempts at classification. 
Agriculture is artificial, as distinct from natural. Itdeals with plants 
and animals and soils removed from the conditions under which they 
naturally occur, and developed by human skill and control away from 
the purposes of nature in the direction most suited to man’s necessities 
or desires. ‘I'he breeds of animals which represent the highest skill of 
man would certainly deteriorate and lose in large part those character- 
istics which give them their value, if abandoned to themselves, and tu 
the conditions which we call natural. So also with plants. Our cul- 
tivated species of improved character can only be formed or maintained 
in their perfection under the conditions of art. We thus must recognize 
that human effort which causes changes in animals or plants, and 
which secures adaptation to a real or. fancied want, is a factor which 
dominates the natural factors in directing development, and in secur- 
ing specified artificial conditions. 
This factor deserves the most careful study as being at the founda- 
tion of agricultural improvement, for it is only by a clear appreciation 
of its power for producing change, of the nature of the changes, of its 
reactions with heredity, and even of its limitations that we can prop- 
erly study this pursuit which has been well defined as the oldest of 
the arts. 
If we examine our vegetable preductions, we can note various facts: 
of interest and of importance. It seems certain that our cereal plants, 
wheat, rye, barley, oats and maize are unknown, in their present form 
at least, in a state of nature, and are the results of developments 
through man’s art, from some unknown, and perhaps little resembling 
natural form. It is equally certain that all these plants have become 
varied under the artificial circumstances of continuous selection, into 
very many distinct varieties of differing properties as regards shape of 
seed, habit of growth, prolificacy, hardiness, etc. ‘The potato has 
