New YorK AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. a 
seem successfully, endeavored to economically administer the 
funds committed to its care. But the limit of economy is now 
reached and the State is now face to face with the question either 
of abandoning the policy of further developing the Station to 
meet existing needs or of supplying increased maintenance funds. 
There are two lines of effort in which the members of the Sta- 
tion staff areengaged: 1, The scientific study of problems, largely 
by laboratory methods, involving the determination of unknown 
principles and facts which are believed to be fundamental to agri- 
cultural practice; 2, the determination of the economic applicabil- 
ity to agricultural technics and practice of such principles and 
facts as the Station discovers. Experience has demonstrated 
that the same man cannot effectively prosecute both lines of 
- endeavor in an extensive way. The botanist, for instance, cannot 
successfully conduct laboratory researches with plant diseases 
and at the same time be responsible for the personal supervision 
of field experiments. An absorption of mind and continuity of 
effort essential to scientific research should not be disturbed by 
frequent and extended absences for excursions about the State. 
Efiicient organization requires that field work and other practical 
demonstrations should be assigned to men who are able to give 
to them their undivided attention, and the same is true of the 
efforts that are more distinctively scientific or investigational. 
At the present time the Station force is not adequate to the prose- 
cution of such investigations and such outdoor demonstrations 
as seem to be demanded of us. I therefore most earnestly recom- 
mend that you endeavor to secure such financial support as shall 
enable us to enlarge our force so that the present members of the 
staff may give greatly increased time to the problems which are 
pressing upon us for solution. 
Fundamentally this is a question of expediency. Which policy 
will the better serve the interests of New York Agriculture? 
Would it be profitable to further enlarge the work of the Sta- 
tion? Certainly the Station is unable to accept more than a 
small minority of the opportunities that come to it for the study 
of important problems. It is equally certain that the agricul- 
tural practice of the State has by no means fully adopted the 
advanced methods which the Station’s investigations have been 
the means of suggesting. It may easily be demonstrated that 
the work of the Station has in the past been highly productive 
