14 DirEcTOR’s REPORT OF THE 
institution can render to farmers. The Station staff is not made 
up of expert farm managers but of scientific specialists who are 
studying problems that are important to agriculture. To illus- 
trate, the botanists study plant diseases and their remedies; the 
bacteriologists investigate soil and dairy conditions that involve 
the action of germ life; the entomologists inquire into the life 
history of injurious insects and the methods for preventing their 
ravages; the horticulturists deal with such questions as plant 
breeding, orchard culture, and varieties of fruit, and the chemists 
and other members of the staff take up questions relating to 
plant and animal nutrition, dairy methods, barn sanitation and 
poultry production. All this effort is largely in the direction of 
seeking new knowledge, which, when obtained, we endeavor to 
adjust to agricultural practice. We do not endeavor to adjust all 
knowledge, experience and business conditions to the manage- 
ment of a given farm, for this is the owner’s problem and for 
us to take it out of his hands, even if it were possible, would do 
him more harm than good. We can and do give advice freely 
on specific points connected with farm management when the 
questions involved are definitely brought before us. 
The Station publications as a source of information.— Modern 
agricultural literature may be divided in a general way into two 
classes, first, that which is placed on the market by publishing 
houses and is largely the literature of compilation with a view 
to a comprehensive discussion of the subject under consideration, 
and second, the literature issued in their official capacity by 
members of government departments and experiment stations. 
Without desiring to criticize policies that may prevail elsewhere, 
I wish to express the conviction that an experiment station en- 
dowed for the maintenance of research, cannot wisely act as a 
bureau of compilation to prepare and publish books on all sorts 
of agricultural subjects. It is often necessary, to be sure, to do 
more or less compiling in order to adjust existing information 
with results obtained at the Station. Such organization of knowl- 
edge on a given subject is legitimate to an investigating agency 
and even necessary. There is a broad difference, however, be- 
tween an exhaustive treatise on the growing of corn or potatoes 
or any other crop and a bulletin setting forth the results of an 
investigation on the stage of growth of corn that yields the most 
nutritive value, or on the influence of seed selection on the amount 
and character of the product. It is the belief of the writer that 
