work, and in no direction has there been greater inquiry during the past year than in the questions relating to instruction and experiment regarding farm structures and machinery. It is to be hoped that funds will be provided in the near future by Congress which will permit of the employment of one or more experts in this branch of rural engineering, and thus enable the experts in drainage and irrigation, who now have to deal with these questions, to give their entire time to work in their special fields. IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE PUBLICATIONS. During the year ending June 30, 1901, the following publications on irrigation and drainage were issued: Egyptian Irrigation; Plans of Structures in Use on Irrigation Canals in the United States; Report of Irrigation Investigations for 1902; Storage of Water in the Cache la Poudre and Big Thompson Rivers; Acquirement of Water Rights in Arkansas Valley in Colorado; Drainage of Farm Lands; Supplemental Report on Drainage in the Fresno District, California; Irrigation in the Valley of Lost River, Idaho; Review of Irrigation Investigations for 1903; and Preparing Land for Irrigation. Additional bulletins prepared and submitted for publication were the following: Irrigation in Northern Italy, Part I; Preparing Land for Irrigation and Methods of Applying Water; Current Wheels: Their Use in Lifting Water for Irrigation; Report on Drainage Investigations for 1903; Report on Irrigation Investigations in the Humid Sections of the United States; and Irrigation and Drainage Investigations of the Office of Experiment Stations. The new matter published contains 717 pages and the reprints 330 pages. WORK AND EXPENDITURES OF AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. This is the tenth annual report on the work and expenditures of the agricultural experiment stations in the United States, made by the Director of the Office of Experiment Stations, under instructions from the Secretary of Agriculture. As heretofore, the report is based on three sources of information, viz, the annual financial statements of the stations, rendered on the schedules prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture, in accordance with the act of Congress; the printed reports and bulletins of the stations, and the reports of personal examinations of the work and expenditures of the stations made by the Director, the assistant director (E. W. Allen), W. H. Beal, and Walter H. Evans. The compilation of the statements regarding the individual stations has been made by Dick J. Crosby. OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. GENERAL OUTLOOK. The business of the Office of Experiment Stations has been larger in amount and variety during the past year than at any previous time in its history. The great increase in the original investigations under its supervision, as well as in the world's literature of agricultural science, which it is the duty of this Office to review, has made necessary the publication of a much larger number of technical and popular documents. A gratifying recognition of the importance of the work of this Office, as well as of agricultural colleges and experiment stations, has been made by Congress in its recent provision for the annual printing of this report. The claims of agricultural education to more definite and adequate recognition in our public school system, as well as in our higher educational institutions, have been more directly and widely presented to teachers and school officers than ever before. In cooperation with the Association of American. Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations a report on the Teaching of Agriculture in the Rural Common Schools was prepared and published as a circular of this Office. The growing interest in this subject throughout the country is shown by the demands for information, which have exceeded the ability of this Office to meet with its present resources. Much progress has been made in bringing the Department into closer touch with the farmers' instiH. Doc. 421, 58-3-4 49 tutes in the several States, and the need of a stronger organization for bringing the results of the Department's home work to the great multitude of farmers who attend the institutes has been clearly revealed. The affairs of the agricultural experiment stations in Hawaii and Porto Rico have been successfully managed by the special agents in charge, and already useful results of investigations have been published. In Alaska evidence of the feasibility of establishing animal industry has been obtained, and the great desirability of experimental inquiries along this line, which will forestal! the expense and discouragement likely to attend private ventures, has been demonstrated. In the nutrition investigations steady progress has been made in the elaborate and fundamental inquiries regarding the laws of human nutrition with the respiration calorimeter and in the more directly practical studies of the nutritive value of cereals, fruits, and meat. The great importance of these investigations is being recognized, not only by scientific and educational institutions throughout this country, but also in many foreign countries. As the result of recent action by Congress the irrigation and drainage investigations have been put on a more permanent basis. In irrigation a definite and very important field of engineering problems directly relating to the most effective and economical utilization of water in the production of crops has been marked out, and lines of work not previously undertaken anywhere have been entered upon. Great enterprises, involving the reclamation of large areas of fertile land, are being aided by the drainage investigations. The problems of agricultural engineering involved in the construction and use of farm machinery and farm buildings and the applications of power to agricultural purposes are coming into greater prominence in our vast agricultural regions, where scarcity of labor is every year a greater drag on agriculture. These problems should be definitely investigated by this Department, and it is hoped that funds will soon be provided for this purpose. A large amount of work has been done in connection with the preparation of two exhibits for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. A description of these exhibits is given on page 687. LINES OF WORK. The work of the Office of Experiment Stations during the past year, as heretofore, has included the supervision of the expenditures of the stations; conferences and correspondence with station officers regarding the management, equipment, and work of the stations; the collection and dissemination of information regarding the progress of agricultural education and research throughout the world by means of technical and popular bulletins; the management of the agricultural experiment stations at Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico; special inves tigations on the nutrition of man and on irrigation and drainage, conducted largely in cooperation with experiment stations, educational institutions, and other agencies in different States and Territories, and the promotion of the interests of farmers' institutes throughout the United States. INCOME. The income of the Office during the past fiscal year, derived wholly from appropriations by Congress, was as follows: For the general business of the Office (including farmers' For the Alaska experiment stations.. For the Hawaii Experiment Station... For the Porto Rico Experiment Station_ For nutrition investigations. For irrigation investigations. Total $45, 000 15,000 15,000 15,000 20,000 65,000 175,000 PUBLICATIONS. During the year the Office published 57 documents, aggregating 5,339 pages, as compared with 44 documents, containing 4,112 pages, the previous year. These documents include 12 numbers of Experiment Station Record, with a combined index of the first 12 volumes of the Record, 16 technical bulletins, 1 bulletin of the Porto Rico Experiment Station (English and Spanish editions), 2 reports, 6 farmers' bulletins (including 3 numbers of the subseries Experiment Station Work), 8 circulars, and 3 articles for the Yearbook of the Department. One other number of the Experiment Station Record, 5 technical bulletins, 2 farmers' bulletins, 2 circulars, and 4 miscellaneous documents, containing about 600 pages, were prepared and submitted for publication before the close of the fiscal year. The policy of reprinting separates of individual articles contained in larger reports has been continued with satisfactory results. Fiftyfour such separates, aggregating 1,241 pages, have been reprinted in editions of varying size to meet the actual demands for the articles. Several documents, particularly those relating to the work and expenditures of the State agricultural experiment stations, as well as those of Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, which were formerly printed separately by Congress, were combined in the Annual Report of the Office of Experiment Stations, for the printing of which Congress has now made special provision. Several of the earlier technical and farmers' bulletins of the Office were exhausted during the year and were reprinted, in many cases with more or less important corrections. Experiment Station Record, Vol. XV, pp. 1247.-This contains abstracts of 380 experiment station bulletins, circulars, etc., 47 annual reports of the stations, 181 publications of this Department, and a very large number of foreign publications. In all there were 4,376 abstracts, classified as follows: Chemistry, 296; botany, 101; fermentation and bacteriology, 23; zoology, 70; meteorology and climatology, 109; air, water, and soils, 159; fertilizers, 155; field crops, 256; horticulture, 387; forestry, 116; seeds and weeds, 61; diseases of plants, 209; entomology, 490; foods and nutrition, 296; animal production, 297; dairy farming and dairying, 233; veterinary science and practice, 789; technology, 8; agricultural engineering, 170; miscellaneous, 151. This volume contains nine leading articles, as follows: New agricultural building at the University of Wisconsin, annual meeting of the American Veterinary Medical Association, new building for farm mechanics at the Iowa College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, convention of Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, convention of Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, agricultural science at the St. Louis meeting, new dairy barn at the Kentucky Station, new buildings of the Department of Agriculture, and respiration calorimeter at the Pennsylvania Experiment Station. The following topics are discussed in the editorials: The mission of the farmers' institute; organization of farmers' institutes; introduction of agriculture at the Mount Hermon School; September meetings of scientific bodies-National Irrigation Congress, American Veterinary Medical Association, International Congress of Hygiene and Dermography, American Pomological Society, and Society of Horticultural Science; irrigation in Italy; State aid of the experiment stations; need of increased funds for the stations; experiment station work in Alaska; farm mechanics as a department of agricultural instruction; report of the Secretary of Agriculture for 1903; the personnel of the Department of Agriculture; the American association meeting at St. Louis; rural economics at the St. Louis meeting; acquisition of the nitrogen of the air by calcium carbid; agricultural research and the Carnegie Institution; Government aid to agriculture in Hungary; investigations on the flow of maple sap; work of the bureau of agriculture in the Philippines; experiment stations in the Philippines; a card index to periodical literature on agricultural science; bimonthly list of experiment station publications; a respiration calorimeter for farm animals; rural economics as a department of agricultural education; instruction in rural economics in European countries; the agricultural appropriation act, 1994-5; inauguration of experiment station work in Cuba; an experiment in secondary agricultural instruction; Levi Stockbridge, deceased; histological studies in relation to food |