[Book Reviews]

Abstract

THIS Experiment Station was established by an Act of Legislature passed in 1880, and amended in 1881. The management is intrusted to a Board of Trustees, who appoint a director, horticulturist, botanist, chemist, stenographer, farmer, and assistants. Such an organisation must be considered as a step in advance beyond anything yet done in this country, being a direct action on the part of the Government to promote the exact knowledge of agriculture. This is the main point we desire to bring before the readers of NATURE. Among the many voices raised on behalf of technical instruction of artisans and others engaged in industrial pursuits, or of musicians and artists, few are to be heard in favour of the promotion of exact agricultural knowledge. The Americans are wiser, and are establishing what they call “experiment stations” in various parts of their wide territory. A few of the objects of investigation at present occupying the attention of the staff of the New York Station may be enumerated as follows—(1) Fertiliser analysis; (2) sample orchards containing single trees of each known variety; (3) soil temperatures at various depths; (4) digestibility of various foods; (5) germination of commercial seed; (6) a study of maize; (7) root-distribution by root-washings; (8) milk; (9) diseases of plants. These sections furnish material for 418 pages, abounding in tables of results of great practical value. The pains taken in thoroughly working out the conditions of milk-production in the case of two cows, “Meg” and “Gem,” are evidence of great activity and zeal. The weight of the cows was taken daily from September 17 to November 12. The weight of food consumed, the accurate analysis of the food, the daily weight of solid and liquid excrements, the daily yield of milk, the daily analysis of the milk,—all this carefully and punctually recorded, and fixed in tables, is a work of great importance, not only as bearing directly upon dairying, but having likewise a physiological value. Such constant daily observations are not only essential, if the experiment is to be of any practical value, but must be beyond the efforts of practical farmers, who really ought not to undertake such investigations. But the value to the community at large when such experiments are conducted quietly and regularly by persons specially set apart and paid to carry them out cannot be overrated. They must not be attempted by ordinary dairymen in ordinary stalls, and with ordinary business appliances, but can only be carried out by trained hands, in specially constructed stalls and with special arrangements, all of which must be carried out at a loss, which loss is the reason for an endowment. It is hard to say whether the perusal of such a Report as now lies before us impresses most with admiration for American activity or regret for English supineness.

Third Annual Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, for the Year 1884.

(Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, and Co.)