56 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPport. 
offices. The cattle barn, forcing houses and poultry houses are also 
well adapted to experimental work. 
Outside of the increase of buildings, the main growth of material 
equipment has been the development of the fruit plantations, from 
a small apple orchard to a collection at times of over 5,000 varieties 
of large and small fruits, including apples, apricots, nectarines, 
peaches, pears, plums, and all the varieties of small fruits of impor- 
tance in the Northern States. 
The Station staff has increased in number from five in 1888 to 
between thirty and forty at the present time. Until 1897 there were 
no clearly recognized departments in the Station outside the chemical 
and horticultural. In that year a policy of enlargement was in- 
augurated and a closer subdivision of the staff was made, so that 
now there exist departments of animal husbandry, bacteriology, 
botany, chemistry, entomology and horticulture. The prominent 
features of the animal husbandry division are the dairy and poultry 
work. 
Such an enlargement of the Station has been made possible only 
through greatly increased financial support. The initial sum pro- 
vided by the State annually for the maintennance of the institution 
was $20,000 and is now $86,500. Besides this sum the institution 
receives one-tenth of the Federal appropriations under the Hatch 
and Adams acts, amounting this year to $2,200. 
POLICY AND WORK OF THE STATION. 
When experiment stations were first established in the United 
States various widely divergent views prevailed as to the work these 
institutions should do and the relations they should sustain to agri- 
cultural practice. In the discussions preceding legislation many 
things were said that created false impressions in the public mind 
as to the kind of service these new institutions would render. 
Comparatively few persons conceived of an experiment station as a 
means of acquiring scientific knowledge fundamental to farm prac- 
tice. It was more generally thought that they were to be model 
farms where farmers would see the best known, and the most 
profitable, management. Recently a member of the first Board of 
Control of the New York Station was asked ‘“ What was it expected 
that the Station would do?” and he replied, “I think the general 
expectation was that we were to run a farm at a profit to show how 
to make it a paying institution.” Gradually, however, the public 
has forsaken the idea of a model farm and has come to understand 
