



11 
condition of so-called agricultural knowledge. It is hoped 
that with the progress of station work, this difficulty may 
be overcome. The relations of the physiology of plant 
growth with meteorological conditions form a study which 
would be considered as fundamental, if we would interpret 
aright the experiences of practical and comparative trial, 
and the same remark applies to the soil relations as well. 
Yet our working force has been insufficient to carry out 
such a study in its necessary completeness, while a public 
sentiment yet but illy educated to the requirements of ex- 
perimental investigation, forbids the neglect of less ad- 
vantageous. but more popular directions of labor. Our 
lysimeter tables are given as usual in this report, and their 
full discussion is as yet postponed until further progress is 
made; so also are our temperature tables and sunlight 
records. At some future time these figures, so uninterest- 
ing in themselves, may prove to have a high value, when 
studied in their relations to the tabular data, so prominent 
in our various reports, and may be expected to throw hight 
upon obscure conditions, and may satisfactorily explain the 
apparent contradictions which ever and anon occur in so- 
called practical work. I refer to these matters in this place, 
to indicate that our opportunities are not as yet sufficient 
for our desires. 
Agricultural experiment work must ever deal with 
theories, and must avoid accepting the results brought 
about through complex conditions, as true facts available 
for generalization. It is only as our apparent facts are 
studied in their relation to the causes which have produced 
them, that they become of value. To report that a cow 
under a given food has yielded 20 pounds of butter a week, 
or 40 quarts of milk, or to give the chemical composition of 
the milk, may represent a series of ascertained facts, and 
yet, so far as experiment is concerned, such facts have little 
value until connected with the causes which have pro- 
duced them; and seeking out these causes involves theo- 
ries which must stand thé test of verification. In trials of 
this character, the test of duplication seems the available 
one in order to secure certainty, for if a second trial with 
the same animal produces a different set of results, or if 
another animal is used, we find the same relations do not 
hold in the various trials, either our theory is at fault, or 
there is a deficiency in our interpretation. 
If in our plats we find that under conditions as uniform 
as we can obtain there is less difference between the crops 
harvested from plats dissimilarly treated than exists between 
other adjoining plats treated alike, this comparison indicates 
very fairly the inaccuracy of the method used. <Agricul- 
tural results to be of value must come under the general 
