16 Drrector’s REporT OF THE 
was subsequently stated that ‘ everything points, therefore, to the 
conclusion that the experiment stations of this State should give 
prominent consideration to whatever will promote these two lines 
of practice.’ , 
“This building is one step in the pursuance of the policy thus 
enunciated. It is to harbor, as the report of the building com- 
mittee states, the departments of dairying and horticulture, with 
those of botany, bacteriology and entomology, the three latter 
being really largely adjuncts of the two former. Dairying is an 
art, but it is one that is being materially modified by the results 
reached through chemical and bacteriological research. Horti- 
culture is also an art, a many-sided one, and it is each year be- 
coming more and more dependent upon the information supplied 
by the botanist and entomologist. 
“Another statement was made in the director’s report for 1896, 
which is also pertinent to this occasion, and which is quoted at 
length: ‘If we base the reply to this question (How can the - 
farmer’s interests best be served?) upon experience, the answer 
must be that the farmer will best be served even from a business 
point of view by a rigid inquiry into the facts and principles which 
underlie his practice. The knowledge which, in its application to 
agriculture, has been in the past fruitful of the best results, is that 
which has come from investigations in the field of pure science, 
and this will undoubtedly be true in the future. Tests of theories 
and illustrative experiments in matters pertaining to the business 
of farming are useful and even necessary, but all safe and per- 
manent advance must proceed primarily from a study of funda- 
mentals. Judged in the light of these statements, then, the real 
function of the Experiment Station is to conduct severe scientific 
inquiry in those lines related to the practice of agriculture and, 
therefore, the controlling policy of this Station should be to 
strengthen and develop its facilities for making such researeh 
exhaustive and conclusive.’ In providing these laboratories this 
Experiment Station is trying to live up to its declaration of prin- 
