New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 45 
These are primarily functions of the State. New York has the 
land, the location, the people and the wealth that should enable it 
to work out these ends. It also has three institutions of funda- 
mental importance, already well established and actively engaged 
in the work: 
1. The Agricultural Experiment Station, which is discovering the 
facts, which is unexcelled by any other, and which is devoting 
itself without reserve to the public weal. 
2. The State Department of Agriculture, which, in breadth of 
organization, in extent of operations, and in the results it has 
accomplished, is not equaled, so far as I know, by any other similar 
department. 
3. The College of Agriculture, which, I hope, will in time also 
be equal to any other. 
These three organizations, liberally supported with money and 
good will, officered by capable and far-seeing men who are not 
disturbed by public alarm, hold the keys of the future for the farms 
of New York State. 
A SPECIFIC EXPERIMENT. 
If the problems that we are discussing are personal, then we 
must begin with the individual man on his own farm. The College 
of Agriculture at Cornell University has long tried to extend itself 
to the man and to see the problems as he sees it. Many “surveys ” 
of special industries have been made in former years and the re- 
sults have been published in readable expository bulletins. Recently 
this idea has been extended to the making of a complete census of 
all the farms in Tompkins County, in order that the actual agri- 
cultural status may be known and judged. This county is chosen 
because it is near at hand, allowing us to work out the method 
at the minimum of expense; and also because the region is repre- 
sentative of a great area of the hill country of the State. It is 
hoped that the inquiry may be extended to other counties. Already 
several counties have been surveyed in their fruit-growing relations. 
I speak of this work not so much to show what has been ac- 
complished, as to illustrate the nature of the questions now under 
discussion and to let it be known that a beginning has really been 
made. 
The “ Tompkins County Agricultural Survey’ 
summer of 1906 when the townships in the western part of the 
bd 
was begun in the 
