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If we can impress our eiers with the importance of this 
single point in their practice we shall have repaid many hundred~ — 
fold all the expense of our Experiment Station. 
In connection with this subject it is well to mention that we 
annually buy in this State four or five million dollars’ worth of 
commercial fertilizers and through the supervision of this busi- . 
ness on the part of the Experiment Stations of the country it has 
resulted that in their purchase of $4,000,000 worth of these pro- 
ducts, the farmers of this State are able to save at least $6,000,000 
annually. 
This may appear a paradox but is literally true, since such has 
been the improvement in quality and reduction in price of these 
commercial fertilizers during the past twenty years, that the 
farmers of to-day can for $4,000,000 buy the same aggregate of 
nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid, for which they would have 
had to pay ten or eleven million dollars twenty years ago. While 
business competition has been largely the cause of this improve- 
ment in quality and reduction in price, such competition has 
arisen through the increased information concerning these pro- 
ducts which the Experiment Stations have diffused among the 
people. 
To illustrate some of our work a sample of beans from the 
Genesee Valley was recently received at the Station. Many doubt- 
less know that New York produces nearly one-half (42.4 per cent) © 
of the bean crop of the United States. 
This malady affecting these beans might result in the entire 
destruction of this industry. At present it is of little concern, 
but we can perhaps remember the first Colorado beetle we ever 
saw, which since has caused a loss of hundreds of millions of 
dollars to this country. 
A delegation of grape growers visited the Station lately to con-— 
fer with reference to certain diseases of the vine, foliage 
and fruit, which were putting in an appearance in the 
vineyards. As evidence of the amazing rapidity of these inva- 
sions of disease, one gentleman who had inspected a diseased 
vineyard in one section of the State reached home on a Saturday I 
and carefully inspected his vines to see if this new disease had 
FS appeared in his own vineyard, and said that he easily carried: 

