soils, field experiments, and other agricultural investigations had been incidentally carried on in accordance with a plan inaugurated as early as 1857 and afterwards made the basis for the highly successful work of the California Experiment Station under his direction.] In the winter of 1875-76 the first field experiments were undertaken to determine the effects of deep culture and of the application of various fertilizers.

In 1875 the laboratory branch of the experiment station work was inaugurated, the regents making provision for the expenses thereof for the first two years; and at the end of this time the legislature opened the way for the continuation and extension of the work by liberal special appropriations from year to year.

After the fund which had been established by the sale of the land scrip donated to Connecticut under the act of Congress of July 2, 1862, had been given to the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College in 1863, a professor of agriculture was added to the working force of that institution. Samuel W. Johnson, M. A., professor of theoretical and agricultural chemistry, and William H. Brewer, Ph. D., the professor of agriculture, have for many years taken an active interest in all work for the promotion of agricultural science in Connecticut and elsewhere in the United States. Under their direction experimental work for the benefit of agriculture was carried on to a limited extent at New Haven more than thirty years ago, and it is doubtless safe to say that "through the influence of the professors and pupils trained in this school, more than to any other single cause, is due the recognition of the importance of the establishment of agricultural experiment stations, first in Connecticut and subsequently throughout the whole country." Prof. W. O. Atwater, the first director of the first regularly organized State experiment station in this country, received a part of his training in this school.

ESTABLISHMENT OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS BY THE STATES.

The reports of the successful and beneficial work done in the European experiment stations excited more and more attention on this side of the Atlantic, and the more advanced leaders in agricultural progress in this country began to ask for the establishment of similar institutions in the United States. In 1872, at a convention of representatives of agricultural colleges held in Washington in response to a call issued by the United States Commissioner of Agriculture, the question of the establishment of experiment stations was discussed, and the report of a committee in favor of such institutions was adopted by the convention. On the 17th of December, 1873, at the winter meeting of the State board of agriculture, at Meriden, Conn., Professor Johnson, of the Sheffield Scientific School, and Professor Atwater, of Wesleyan University, urged the establishment of an agricultural experiment station in that State after the European pattern. A committee was appointed to consider the expediency of such a movement, and reported two days later that it was their "unanimous opinion that the State of

Connecticut ought to have an experiment station as good as can be found anywhere, and that the legislature of the State ought to furnish the means for its establishment. A permanent committee was then appointed by the board to bring this matter to the attention of the public and the legislature. This committee held meetings in different parts of the State, and the following winter secured the introduction of a bill for an experiment station, which, however, was laid over until the next session of the legislature. Another year of agitation of the matter ensued. The project had many warm and enthusiastic friends, but, as might have been expected, the great mass of the farmers took little interest in the enterprise. When it had become apparent that it could not otherwise succeed, Mr. Orange Judd, then editor and proprietor of the American Agriculturist, offered on his own part $1,000 to begin the undertaking, and on the part of the trustees of Wesleyan University, at Middletown, the free use of the chemical laboratory in the Orange Judd Hall of Natural Science.

These offers were made on condition that the legislature should appropriate $2,800 per annum for two years for the work of the station. It was thought that if by these means the work of agricultural experimentation could actually be begun, the usefulness of the enterprise would be so clearly demonstrated that it would speedily receive more generous and permanent support. An act making the appropriation thus proposed was unanimously passed, and approved July 2, 1875. Early in October of the same year a chemist was on the ground, and as soon as practicable two assistants were secured. Professor Atwater was made director, and thus the first State agricultural experiment station in America was an accomplished fact. Notwithstanding the severe financial depression of 1877, which caused serious reduction in old appropriations and utter refusal of new ones by the legislature of that year, a bill prepared by the director of the station and making a permanent annual appropriation of $5,000 "to promote agriculture by scientific investigation and experiment" was passed unanimously. At the end of the two years provided for in the original bill the station was reorganized under the direct control of the State and permanently located in New Haven, where it has since been in successful operation, until 1882 in the laboratory of the Sheffield Scientific School, and thereafter in buildings and on grounds provided by the State in the suburbs of the city.

The success which attended this attempt to establish a State experiment station in the United States was sufficient to attract the attention of advanced agriculturists throughout the country, and the example set by Connecticut was soon followed in other States. March 12, 1877, the State of North Carolina established an agricultural experiment and fertilizer-control station at Chapel Hill in connection with the State University in accordance with an act of the legislature 17019-No. 80-3

creating a Department of Agriculture, Immigration, and Statistics. The Cornell University experiment station was organized in February, 1879, by the faculty of agriculture of the university, as a voluntary organization. From that time until the passage of the act of Congress of March 2, 1887, the work was carried on by the different professors in such time as could be spared from other studies. For a part of that time the trustees of the university appropriated money from the university funds to pay for the services of an analyst and for the purchase of supplies. All the other work was done without compensation. The New Jersey State Station at New Brunswick, N. J., was established March 18, 1880, by an act of the State legislature and connected with the scientific school of Rutgers College.

The movement grew in favor with the people with each succeeding year, and in 1886 the Committee on Agiculture in reporting the Hatch bill to the House was able to make the following statements:

Since 1881 the legislatures of several States have either recognized or reorganized the departments of agriculture in the land-grant colleges as "experiment stations," thus following substantially the course adopted by New Jersey. Such stations have been established in Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. In three other States (probably more), without legislative action, the college authorities have organized their agricultural work as experiment stations. This has been done in California, Missouri, and New York. But in addition to the twelve experiment stations specifically designated by that name a very large number of the colleges established under the act of 1862 are doing important work of a precisely similar kind. Many of them began such work immediately upon their establishment, and have since maintained it continuously; others have entered upon it more recently. The colleges in Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are carrying on what is strictly experiment-station work as a part of their ordinary duty.

HOUGHTON FARM.

The only attempt in America to establish an agricultural experiment station through the munificence of one man deserves recognition in this article, although it was short-lived. In the year 1876 Mr. Lawson Valentine, a philanthropic and public-spirited native of Massachusetts, conducting a prosperous business in New York City, purchased a tract of several hundred acres in the township of Cornwall, Orange County, New York, to which he gave the name of Houghton Farm. Soon afterwards he conceived the idea of establishing at this place a series of systematic agricultural experiments. Mr. Valentine naturally took for his model the work of Lawes and Gilbert at Rothamsted, England, but with modifications suited to American conditions.

In the summer of 1879 Dr. Manly Miles, of Michigan, was engaged as director of experiments, and during the next eighteen months he laid out suitable fields, constructed a system of drainage, and visited the principal stations of Europe for the purpose of studying plans and methods of investigation. Early in 1881 the scheme was reorganized,

and Maj. Henry E. Alvord, of Massachusetts, was placed in charge as general manager, with these instructions from the proprietor:

First, conduct the farming operations in accordance with the best known methods and under the best possible organization and management, with a view of educating and enlightening others by furnishing valuable examples and results in practical agriculture. Second, organize and operate a scientific department devoted to agricultural investigation and experiment, to be of the highest order, and such as to command the respect, interest, and cooperation of leading scientists of this and other countries.

Upon this basis Houghton Farm was conducted for about five years. The experiment department, with its own organization, assignment of real estate, and equipment, was maintained at an expense to the proprietor approaching $20,000 per annum. The experimental work inaugurated was grouped under four heads: (1) Agricultural physics; (2) plant growth; (3) diseases of plants; and (4) animal growth and production. The scheme included four corresponding series of publications, issued at irregular intervals. Papers were published and distributed during 1882, 1883, and 1884 in the three series first named. The main work consisted of field experiments in growing maize; 36 plats of an area of one-fifth acre each were continuously cultivated for several years, and part of the records were published. Extensive provisions were made for work in breeding and feeding dairy cattle and mutton sheep, and in dairy products, but no pamphlet publications were issued on this line.

The death of Mr. Valentine in 1888 put an end to this enterprise.

MOVEMENT TO SECURE FEDERAL AID FOR EXPERIMENT STATIONS.

The convention of delegates of agricultural colleges which met at Washington in 1883 discussed and indorsed the project for the establishment of stations in connection with the colleges by appropriations from the National Treasury, in accordance with the terms of a bill already introduced in the House of Representatives by C. C. Carpenter, of Iowa. Congress, however, was not yet quite ready to undertake so large a scientific enterprise in this direction, and the bill was not put upon its passage. Meanwhile the number of stations was steadily increasing, and the interest of practical farmers, as well as men of science, was more and more excited by the reports of the results of the experiments which the stations had completed. On July 8, 1885, a convention of agricultural colleges and experiment stations met at the Department of Agriculture at Washington, in response to a call issued by the Commissioner of Agriculture. Almost the first thing which this convention did was to adopt a resolution "that the condition and progress of American agriculture require national aid for investigation and

experimentation in the several States and Territories; and that therefore this convention approves the principle and general provisions of what is known as the Cullen bill of the last Congress, and urges upon the next Congress the passage of this or a similar act." (The Cullen bill was in its general provisions similar to the bill afterwards passed by Congress and now popularly known as the Hatch Act.) So earnest was the convention in this matter that it appointed a committee on legislation, which was very efficient in securing the passage of the amended bill.

In a later session the convention adopted resolutions urging the creation of a branch of the Department of Agriculture at Washington which should be a special medium of intercommunication and exchange between the colleges and stations, and which should publish a periodical bulletin of agricultural progress, containing in a popular form the latest results in the progress of agricultural education, investigation, and experimentation in this and in all other countries. Provision was also made for a permanent organization by the appointment of a committee to cooperate with the United States Commissioner of Agriculture in determining the time of meeting and the business of the next convention, and in forming a plan for a permanent organization.

At the next session of Congress the experiment station enterprise was again called to the attention of the House of Representatives, by the bill which was introduced by William H. Hatch, of Missouri, and referred to the Committee on Agriculture. This committee made a favorable report March 3, 1886, and nearly a year later the bill was passed by Congress, and was approved by President Cleveland March 2, 1887.

THE HATCH ACT.

The Hatch Act (see Appendix) provides that $15,000 a year shall be given out of the funds proceeding from the sale of public lands to each State and Territory for the establishment of an agricultural experiment station, which must be a department of the land-grant college established under the act of Congress of July 2, 1862, except in the case of those States which had established experiment stations as separate institutions prior to the passage of the former act.

The duties of the stations are thus defined:

SEC. 2. That it shall be the object and duty of said experiment stations to conduct original researches or verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals; the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparative advantages of rotative cropping as pursued under a varying series of crops; the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation; the analysis of soils and water; the chemical composition of manures, natural or artificial, with experiments designed to test their comparative effects on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digestibility of the different kinds of food for domestic animals; the scientific and economic