NeEw York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 59 
It was during the administration of Dr. Collier that the existence 
of the Station was jeopardized. In his annual message for 1893, 
Governor lower suggested the discontinuance of the Station by 
concentrating all such efforts at Cornell University. Later he visited 
the institution and evidently changed his point of view, for in his 
message of the following year he advised that the Station be well 
sustained. 
The directorship of the Station changed hands again about the 
middle of 1895, Dr. L. L. Van Slyke acting as director until July 
I, 1896, at which time the writer assumed the office, which 
position he still holds. During the past twelve years the Station 
has continued to grow steadily in its equipment and scope of work 
practically along the lines which previously occupied its attention. 
The more notable results during this period have been a closer 
specialization of the work through additions to the staff and its 
more definite division into departments, the growth in laboratory 
facilities for special work, particularly in bacteriology, botany, 
entomology, and dairying, and a material increase of experimental 
work in various parts of the State in studying the use of fertilizers, 
the testing of spraying and other methods for the control of 
fungus diseases and injurious insects, the comparison of methods 
of orchard management, observations on alfalfa culture and other 
lines of work. We have rented land, leased orchards and made 
other business arrangements with farmers in order to carry on these 
outside observations satisfactorily. During the past three or four 
years from thirty to forty experiments have been in operation each 
year in co-operation with nearly as many farmers in different parts 
of the State.- In addition to this, sixty or more farmers have re- 
ceived soil for inoculating new alfalfa, and volunteer observations 
on potato spraying have been reported to us by a large number of 
potato growers. ‘This general plan has much to commend it and 
continued experience strengthens the conclusion that it is the most 
efficient way possible for testing Station conclusions and at the same 
time impressing the results upon the attention of farmers. 
METHODS OF EXPERIMENTATION. 
The first director of the Station held, and with much reason, that 
the first work of our experiment stations should be to establish safe 
methods of experimentation. At the time the New York Station 
was established, a great deal of field experimentation was in opera- 
tion by the plat system and many feeding experiments were being 
