New York Agaricutturat Exprrment Station. 17 
ciples. What is to be the work of the horticulturists? Certainly 
not merely to study the cultural side of the fruit-grower’s business, 
but to discover and formulate those laws of plant life which con- 
trol all the practice of the garden and field. Prof. Beach will 
use the implements of research more than he will the pruning 
knife, however essential the latter may be. . 
“Tt is not expected that the botanist, Mr. Stewart, will devote 
himself wholly to naming new or unusual plants or to explaining 
how to eradicate weeds, but much of his time will be spent in 
searching out the hidden processes which have their course within 
the tissues of plants. The microscope, the sterilizer and the in- 
cubator will be his tools. The bacteriologist will also be a student 
of those minute organisms which seem to have so profound a 
relation to man’s welfare, and this member of the Station’s staff 
will be most useful when he is most scientific. Possibly he may 
spend days or months hunting for a single fact in the life history 
of one of these germs. The entomological laboratory is not built 
simply to contain a collection of ‘bugs’ although it is very im- 
portant to have such a collection for reference purposes. Mr. 
Lowe will seek first for the hfe history of these little animals, 
both troublesome and useful, and when he is successful he will se- 
cure-the data that are most valuable. 
“We shall come nearest to the practice of an art in the dairy 
department, but the practical operations of the butter and cheese 
room will not be of a commercial character. Our dairy apparatus 
and our unique cheese-curing rooms are put into the hands of our 
dairy expert simply that he may co-operate with the chemist and 
bacteriologist in discovering the facts and principles fundamental 
to a proper control of manufacturing processes. Unusually fine 
equipment exists not to admire but to use in learning the effects 
of temperature and other conditions upon the compounds and 
organisms of our dairy products. 
“Ts any one skeptical about all this effort being of use to 
agriculture? He may quiet his fears, for the history of the past 
shows that the tiller of the soil will ultimately reap a benefit. 
2 
