mainder of the space is taken up with things relating to the Pennsylvania State College, and it has very little to say upon the subject of experimental farming. From what I can understand of it, it is a very mysterious way of treating the subject of scientific agriculture. This essay of "Hardy Catalpa of Central Pennsylvania," I would ask what it has to do with the matter that these pages are intended for, and then why is the report restricted to twenty pages, and then almost two pages of that taken up with an essay that can be of no possible use to the farmer? I would say that it would be a great deal better on the culture of ducks or on the raising of chickens in a way which would be profitable. The catalpa is a tree that grows here in our county, and we would like to know how to get rid of it. Now, is there any sense in wasting the money of the State in a public institution like that? I would like you to tell me what is the use of it.

Q. That is in the report of 1891, is it?

A. Yes, sir. Now, in the next place, look at the list of students of this college. We count one hundred and seventy-six altogether, then we deduct twelve names inserted twice, which leaves one hundred and sixty-four students in attendance there during the last year. This includes the students attending in the classical course, and all of that kind which it was never intended that this institution should receive this money for to expend it. We have very good classes of colleges in the State where persons who desire to pursue the classes of that kind can go and receive the very best kind of a classical education. The trouble is these farms are being stultified at the expense of this college in Centre county. Here is a list of one hundred and sixty students, and I believe one hundred and five of them are in the preparatory department. Now, it was never intended that there should be a preparatory department connected with this institution; but in all of the list I can find no students that are pursuing an agricultural course. There has not been one graduate turned out by this college yet who has taken a pure agricultural course; and then if you want any chemical analyses, it is impossible-you can't have it done. I have known persons to have written there repeatedly to have analyses made, but never got any. John Carter wanted to know the relative value of ashes, and he sent it to the State College to have an analysis made or for the information he wanted, but he never got anything from them. He wrote several times but he never got a reply; he never got word on the subject from them. I can't give the reason for this, but in the first place, I think they didn't know how to do it, and in the second place, they have always been very poor.

Q. You have stated, Mr. Harvey, that you were superintendent of this farm for three years, down from 1867 to 1868 and 1870 ?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. How did you come to leave the farm, Mr. Harvey?

A. These experiments were carried on for three years, then there was a new series of experiments suggested by the board of trustees of the college that interfered very much with our programme of experiments that we had adopted and we got along with very nicely. I was very much disgusted with the plans they wanted us to adopt. As a matter of course, there were a few very good suggestions among them, but the most of them were very ridiculous; and, rather than do these ridiculous things, I quit the farm, and did not want to have anything to do with it. During the time I was on the farm I took great delight in doing whatever was required of me. There was a committee appointed; I think Chalkley Harvey, George Lefever, and Joseph Pyle composed the committee. That

committee was known as the advisory committee, a committee to direct how these experiments should be carried out, and I think my neighbor farmers here will all agree that I was very obedient to obey their orders in every particular; indeed, I took universal delight in doing, as near as I could, what they would say and was always glad to have their counsel. These gentlemen were all very much interested in the success of the experiments, as they were all practical farmers themselves and it was of great use to them in conducting their farms. There was hardly a week but what some one of these gentlemen would come to see how I was getting along. I was always delighted to see them come, and in our meetings we discussed the experiments that we were trying, and, in fact, watched them very closely; and when the time came to make up my reports to the college I always had a great many things to report. Lacey Darlington was also very much interested in the progress we made. He was a member of the board of the trustees of the college and came very often to see me. These experiments, while I was superintendent, was all done under the programme of experiments we had adopted, and we got along very well during the whole time we worked under this programme and while we were not interfered with by the trustees of the Pennsylvania Agricultural College. We made our report regularly to the college, at the end of every year, and that is about all we had to do with the Pennsylvania Agricultural College or its board of trustees. We could never get any money from the college, and we thought we had perfect right to conduct it as we saw fit and try such experiments as would be of the most use to us in the eastern part of the State, as the experiments we wanted to try here and what would be of most use to us would not be of the same benefit to the central or western portion of the State. We paid attention very particularly to practical farming, raising vegetables and things for the city market; while the central part of the State was more engaged in grain raising, and the western in the raising of stock for the cattle market. Things moved along in this way very nicely for about three years, when we were informed to meet at Harrisburg for the purpose of drafting another programme of experiments.

Q. When was this, Mr. Harvey?

A. I can't give you the dates. I had run this farm for about three years, and got along very well, and there was no need in changing the programme of experiments. But it was in the winter sometime, that we were invited to appear at Harrisburg, to meet a committee appointed to discuss the propriety of adopting another series of experiments for the Eastern, Western, and Central experimental farms of Pennsylvania, when we got there, to Harrisburg, it turned out to be a committee; the committee turned out to be H. N. McAllister, of Centre county; A. Boyd Hamilton, of Dauphin county; Thomas A. Burrows, President of Pennsylvania Agricultural College; Daniel Knapp, President of the Pennsylvania State Agricultural Society; B. Carter, Superintendent of the Western experimental farm, and D. Lacy Darlington and myself. We were invited to be there to get up a new programme of experiments, so as ro run the Eastern experimental farm in consort with the other two farms. The members of this committee were pretty fair representative men of the various interests in the State. We met there on one day to hold the meeting, but were not there for many minutes, until Thomas H. Burrows made an excuse to leave, and pretty soon Mr. Kapp had to leave, and so the members left one after another until there was no one left but Hamilton, McAllister, Darlington, and myself. We wanted to discuss the subject of introducing new experiments, but there was no opportunity to do so, as Mr. McAllister

had evidently came there to run the meeting of that committee, and he did so, too. We proposed measures that we should like to have presented and discussed, but we could not have any of our measures adopted. They would not even hear us discuss them, and anything we presented they laid immediately upon the table; so we talked around there for sometime, and the first thing we knew McAllister pulled out of his pocket a large roll of papers, on which he had written out a series of experiments, some of which were the most ridiculous of anything I had ever heard. With the exception of a few, which were very good and would have paid us to have adopted, the most of them we had already been experimenting with on our Eastern experimental farm, that were included in this programme of experiments which we have given you a copy of. I tried to persuade Mr. McAllister that some of his experiments were perfectly absurd to try, but we could not get a hearing there, and we left them in disgust. We saw they were determined to adopt the programme which he had gotten up, and there was no use for us to say anything one way or the other. I think I went to the hotel for the evening, and the next morning started home; didn't attend the meeting of the next morning. I think Darlington stayed there, but I do not know whether he was at the meeting. Mr. McAllister would not hear to anything that we had to say, and was very arbitrary and didn't even pay us enough of respect to listen to what we had to say on the subject. We had some very good suggestions to make, but they would not take any of our suggestions, and we thought, therefore, we would not submit to their programme of experiments. I never worked by their programme of experiments, and concluded before I would adopt that progromme I would quit the farm first, and that is the way I came to leave it. I was not going to spend my time. I was not going to spend time which I considered was very valuable, and which I was spending for the information of my fellow-farmers. I took great delight in dispensing information to my friends, taking their suggestions when they had one to give, and I think my neighbor farmers will say that I done so, and that I conducted the farm conscientiously and carefully. At this meeting I had taken along our programme of experiments, but they didn't do us as much of an honor as even to look at them. McAllister was very headstrong, and would not listen to anything that did not come from him; and I think for ridiculous ideas he beat anything I ever saw. He was like the Medes and Persians, and would not bend a bit to anything that was against his idea. He wanted everything his own way. They adopted this programme of McAllister's, and wanted me to introduce it here. I refused to do so, and I notified Lacy Darlington, who was trustee at the time, that I would not carry out that programme. Before I would do it I would leave the farm. I didn't want to be disgraced with that kind of proceedings. One of the experiments I remember of was on his programme, was to take corn from the butt end of the ear, from the middle, and from the top, and plant it side by side, and see what the results of it would be. I laughed at the idea, and told him that would never do, and told him that the corn would be mixed, and you could not help it. 1 tried to convince him of this, but before I did so I went on and showed him where I had planted black and yellow, different varieties of corn, alongside of each other in rows, and showed him how it became mixed, which was something we knew many years before that. In order to carry out his programme we would have to have a great many more experimental plots than what we then had, and in order to get them up would have been wasting valuable time, and in the end would not amount to anything.

Q. Was this second programme substituted while you were superintendent?

A. Yes, sir; toward the last end of the term I was superintendent. I would not work under his programme, and there was beginning to be too much outside interference by the board of trustees of the college, and which came principally from McAllister. The result of this programme of McAllister's was to run the thing into the ground. I thought it was really impudent on the part of McAllister to dictate everything that we should try in the way of experiments on the Eastern farm. We knew better what was adapted to the interest of our farmers in the Eastern portion of the State than he did, and that we were to be cut off in this manner was more than I could stand. I never we never-got any money from the college to try these experiments. When we first started we had the promise of a thousand dollars to give to the experimental farm, but we never got it. One time in the early history of the farm I received a letter from Judge Watts, who was very much interested in the programme of experiments we had adopted, and he said he knew we did not have much money, so he inclosed his check for $500, and it is not paid yet to my knowledge; and I think it is a great shame for the Pennsylvania Agricultural College to spend $30,000 they get from the State every year, and not pay this money that Judge Watts advanced for the interest of the experimental farm, as his family, I am told, need it very much. But as you proceed in your investigation you will find many steps quite as black as this one connected with this Pennsylvania Agricultural College, such as have been a disgrace to our State.

Q. What would you suggest should be done with this farm?

A. Well, I am hardly prepared to say what should be done with it. They have agricultural experimental stations that give a great deal of information to the farmers, but whether that would be the right thing either, I do not know. But the way the thing is run now it gives no information to nobody. There is no use in spending people's money in keeping it up in this style. There was never a word said as to dairy farming, and I never needed so much information on that subject as I do now, but I can't get it from the agricultural college. I can't find out whether the silo process is the best or some other way-the common way of preparing fodder-in order how to feed cows so as to have them give the largest quantity and the best quality of milk. Information of that kind, I think, it is very important that the experimental farms should give. Indeed, I am not prepared to say what would be the best thing to do. I think a farm like the present one, with more money to run it, could be made a very valuable thing for the farmers of our part of the State. Then in horticulture. The experiments that I was carrying on in that science was becoming very valuable. To illustrate what I was doing in that way: I wanted to find out the best time to trim apple trees. I commenced and cut off a limb of the apple tree on a certain day in the year, and cut off a limb every day for twelve months, to find out what time it should be cut off so as to heal most rapidly and best. Some would heal without any difficulty, others would not heal so soon, and some would not heal at all. Now, that is a very important thing for farmers to know when is the best time in the year to trim or prune their apple trees. I believe an agricultural station, with a library attached, could be made to be a very valuable thing in this country where young men could go and take a course of studies in agriculture during the winter and having the benefits of all the experiments made by the experimental station. They would be very willing to pay for the information that could be obtained at places of that kind during the

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winter months, when they could not do much on the farm at home, and it should be made to pay a great many of the expenses which would be incurred in making expenditures.

By Mr. Mylin:

Q. Mr. Harvey, do you think an agricultural experimental station could be made self-sustaining?

A. Oh, no, I don't; for I think there would be no income connected with it at all from the experiments that would be made. I think the experiments would cost more than the products, but we would have results of the experiments, and that would pay for the benefits of other persons that was interested in farming, but the money paid by these persons attending the experimental station would go toward paying expenses.

Q. How would you conduct the agricultural experimental station—where would you get the means to run it?

A. Well, these experimental farms-take the money arising from the sale of these and establish an agricultural experimental station, and then appropriate the money that is given to the Pennsylvania State College for this purpose, which would be of great benefit to the people of Pennsylvania?

Q. Do you think there has been made any foreign use of the money that should have gone to this farm; what is your knowledge on that subject? A. No, sir; I do not. I think the institution has always been very poor. That was the great trouble. They wanted to do more than what they had money to do it with, and, as a matter of course, the farmers were the ones that suffered by that proceedings. I have no charge to make about the willful mis-spending of the money, but some of the people connected with this department have made evasions in which you might look into. One time there was a meeting held on the land here of the Farmers' Club, when the president of the board of trustees was present and made a speech. They would like to do this and that, how much they would like to keep us, and do so and so for the farm, and all that kind of thing he said. He said they didn't have the money to do so, and made a very eloquent and sensible speech, and he would have made a very good impression here if he had not in the course of his speech read the act incorporating the Pennsylvania State College, for the purpose of showing us what amount of money the college had the right to receive from the State, and in reading the act he left out the most vital part of it. I will leave it to my neighbor farmers here if that is not so. Chalkley Harvey knows that. John Plowshare, was it not so? "Yes; it was so."

Under the condition that the college was to receive this, the trustees were to establish, conduct, and maintain three experimental farms. In reading the act, he left that part of it out.

By Mr. Alexander:

Q. To whom do you refer, Mr. Harvey?

A. Why, General Beaver. I did not want to be personal, and, therefore, did not want to mention his name. He made a very flattering speech, but in reading the act he left out that part of it which was the most vital part in the whole act.

Q. What act do you refer to the act of Congress?

A. No, sir; the act which required the establishing, conducting, and maintaining of three experimental farms.

Q. Then it was the act of February 19, 1867?

A. Yes, sir; that must be it. The three most important words I see in the act he left out. Now, I will give you another thing that you ought to investigate. At the time this programme committee met at Harrisburg, I