bo 
(90) 
usual corps of assistants. I consequently suggested, early in 
June, to the authorities of the State Agricultural Experiment 
Station at Champaign, the idea of providing for more elaborate 
experiments in the field, and of supplying a limited amount of 
tested infection material for trial by farmers themselves. Under 
ordinary circumstances, of course, I should not have proposed 
this general supply to farmers until we had reached more definite 
and promising conclusions as a result of our own experimental 
work, but I was led to make this proposition this year by the 
following considerations: 
1. I was not yet prepared to say positively that the con- 
tagious-disease method applied as in Kansas would not take 
effect in very many cases if persistently followed up. As long 
as there was even an appreciable chance that the farmers might 
thus save any considerable part of their crops this season by our 
aid, it seemed to me that they were entitled to the benefit of the 
doubt in favor of this procedure, especially as the expense of a 
general distribution would be, at most, a trifle compared with 
the great interests at stake. 
2. The general credit which this method has received through 
the above-mentioned publications and through the agricultural 
papers and daily press, and the firm belief which very many of 
our farmers already had in it, made it seem very likely that noth- 
ing would satisfy them except a chance to try it. 
3. I was reasonably well satisfied from our own field obser- 
vations and laboratory experiments that, under favorable weather 
conditions, this contagious disease might do an immense service 
to those parts of the State threatened with the destruction of 
their wheat and corn; and as we could not foresee the weather 
of the season, I thought it incumbent on us to take measures to 
derive the greatest possible advantage from weather favorable 
to the disease, if such weather should follow. 
4. I wished, finally, to see for myself how generally and 
accurately the somewhat complicated directions necessary to an 
intelligent use of this method would be followed out by the 
average farmer when greatly interested in the result. 
This plan of experimentation and distribution was very 
promptly taken up and favorably considered by the Execu- 
tive Committee of the Station Board, and I was authorized 
to spend in this direction not to exceed $200 previous to 
