*STUART, WM... Experiment Station, Burlington, Vt. STUBEURAUCH, A. V. . Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. *TAYLOR, W. A......Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. TOURINER, ALFRED...Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. *TRACY, W. W., SR....Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. *WALKER, ERNEST. *WATSON, B. M.

Experimental Station, Fayetteville, Ark. Bussey Institute, Jamaica Plain, Mass. Queens, N. Y. Cornell College of Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y. 1715 Railway Exchange, Chicago, Ill. Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y.

WILSON, C. S. . . . . . . Cornell College of Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y.

Bristol, Va.

WARD, C. W

WEBBER, H. J.

*WEED, H. E.

WELLINGTON, RICHARD..

WOOD, L. J

STATEMENT BY THE SECRETARY-TREASURER.

In order to acquaint the members with the condition of the Society at the time the present Secretary-Treasurer assumed the duties of this office last October, and the present condition as the 1907 report goes to press in February, 1908, this statement is made. The writer inherited with the office $42.75 in cash, an indebtedness of $8.70, the manuscripts of two unpublished annual reports (1905 and 1906), besides of course the papers read at the 1907 meeting, and unpaid annual dues amounting to $399, providing each member would pay back dues from the time he joined the Society and including the 1907 dues not paid. at that date. Many members had not paid dues since 1903 when the Society was organized and were thus delinquent to the amount of $8 each.

The October request for dues was responded to with expressions of hope and encouragement and $100 in cash, checks and postal money orders. Another request a month later brought in $60 more. Other requests, appeals and personal letters have poured out of the Secretary's office until the present time and the total amount collected since October 1 is $273. This includes the dues of 19 new members who joined in 1907.

A few members have asked to have their names dropped, but with two exceptions declined to pay up their back dues. Several others have dropped themselves by paying no attention whatever to the Secretary's letters and appeals.

An analysis of the recent cash credits shows how earnest and loyal our membership is. One member paid *$9, nine paid $8 each, nine

*One dollar was paid in 1905.

J

paid $6 each, and sixteen paid $4 each, making a total of $199 paid by thirty-five members.

The Society has now recovered from some of the troubles incident. to youth; it is in better working and financial condition than it has been in for some time, and has before it a bright future in scientific horticultural research work.

TREASURER'S REPORT, 1907.

Dr.

S. A. Beach, dues for 1906 credited from Society's indebted-
ness to him...

1906. July 6

$2.00

28

Bill Geneva Printing Company.

5.50

28

C. P. Close, postage.

1.40

28

U. P. Hedrick, postage and clerical work.

4.57

31

Loan from S. A. Beach, repaid......

23.54

1907.

Jan. 17

150 return postal cards.......

3.00

THE TEACHING, EXPERIMENT AND RESEARCH PHASES OF HORTICULTURE.

BY L. H. BAILEY, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.

The Society for Horticultural Science is the organization of the teachers and experimenters in horticulture. Its purpose is to organize, concrete and forward the work in which these men are engaged, to the end that their common problems and processes may be better related and understood. More than any other horticultural society, it may define, formulate, and set forth; for it is not pressed by the necessity of proving itself to its membership. For the moment, we may consider the relation of its membership to research, contrasting thereby the various phases of effort in which official horticulturists are engaged.

The official horticulturist is an American development. He is the product of the agricultural college, and its experiment station department. At first he was professedly a teacher. In order to teach, he must find out, and he became an experimenter of necessity and also in self-defense. As an experimenter he was early in the field, before the dairy expert, the animal husbandryman, the soil specialist, or the agronomist as such. The Hatch Act was only about two years old when (June, 1889) the horticulturists of the stations met at Columbus, Ohio, to consider the inadequacy of tests of varieties, and they then developed a set of rules of nomenclature that has had marked effect. This indicates that the first organized effort of the horticulturists of the experiment stations was to meet the timely and pressing problems of the day, in the interest of the practical needs of the people. Inasmuch as horticulture is primarily an art and a business, this expositional effort has properly continued to this day to be the chief concern of the official horticulturist. This also has properly been the chief concern of our experiment stations in general.

The Hatch Act is the expression of a people wanting direct, quick, timely information, to aid in the daily business of farming. This is well set forth in the declaration of purposes: "That it shall be the object and duty of said experiment station 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 questions involved in the

production of butter and cheese; and such other researches or experiments bearing directly on the agricultural industry of the United States as may in each case be deemed advisable, having due regard to the varying conditions and needs of the respective states or territories."

Practical and directly applicable work was the result of this enactment. The work has been largely along the lines of observation, testing, compiling, disseminating. Its purpose has been to meet the pressing problems presented everywhere by the man who is meeting difficulties.

In due time, however, persons began to want knowledge independently of present difficulties: they wanted to know the real reasons why. In fact, the official horticulturist himself has felt the necessity of real understanding, for he cannot forever answer questions from the surface indications. The Adams Act is the expression of a people wanting final reasons and real facts. This is well set forth in the declaration of purposes: "To be applied only to paying the necessary expenses of conducting original researches or experiments."

It appeals to me that the horticulturists have not met the research phases of the work as actively and effectively as have some other departments of the experiment stations. There are two adequate reasons for this: (1) their work is professedly "practical" or applicable, (2) the scientific research phases are being appropriated by men bearing other names, the botanists are coming to life, the soil men have segregated themselves, the plant-breeders are in process of segmentation. It is a real question, therefore, what the science field of the horticulturist actually is. The field is made by the man, of course; but the official title of the man is made by somebody else. It is of much importance to each member of this Society what relation he is to bear to the Adams Fund or to other funds designed for research work.

As I conceive it, research is the attack of fundamental or underlying questions, founded on long and patient personal preparation, endeavoring to reach their ultimate causes and reasons, the results to constitute a real contribution to human knowledge, of wide or even universal application, and standing good in years to come as well as now. It is a contribution to the substratum of truth, on which rational practice may eventually solidly rest. As it may be non-timely, so is it unhasting. It is not observation; it is not testing; it is not demonstration; it is not playing with a thing to see what it will do; it is not recording phenomena or reactions or other data; it is not the mere elucidation of practices; it is not description; it is not the effort to make things prove; it is not mere experimenting-to experiment is to try. This last phrase suggests that I call attention to the fact that the Hatch Act establishes "experiment stations;" I have often wondered what would have been the result if it had established research stations.

Now, research is not so much a matter of the subject, as of the intention, the point of view, the method of work. That is to say, whether any piece of work is experimenting or research is determined by the

man.

Every subject or question has its underlying reasons, how and why. This being true, there is no reason why the horticulturist should not engage in research as well as anybody else.

If every subject may develop both an experiment intention and a research intention, it will not be necessary to make a list of the horticultural subjects that are proper under the Adams Fund, but only to illustrate still further what I mean by these distinctions. To make tests of spraying mixtures and machines is ordinarily not research: to endeavor to study the real chemistry of spray mixtures, their physiological action on the insect or fungus, their effect on the tree or the soil, their relation to climatic changes, may be research if the subject is approached with the determination to bring to bear patiently the best knowledge and methods and to discover laws and principles. The two kinds of work may progress at the same time under the same hand, but the likelihood, judging from experience, is that they will not. To endeavor merely to produce a new variety of plant by crossing and sowing the seeds may or may not be research, with the probability that it will not be: the effort to determine the laws of variation, the physiological processes of heredity, the numerical results of hybridization, and the like, ought to be research. Varietytesting is ordinarily not research; in fact, it is a question whether it is ordinarily even good experimenting: but the variation of varieties, their relation to soil and climate, the correlation of their behavior under different conditions and in different places, ought to be research of the best kind. Similar remarks may be extended to all our customary subjects.

A man may experiment with many things, but he can undertake research with only a few things. The research man is, of necessity, a rather close specialist. He seeks permanent rather than temporary results. He is likely to be an obscure man, as the world goes, avoiding the lime-light. He cannot delegate very much of his work. He stands by it, and has personal knowledge of all the processes and events.

The greatest handicap to research in the American experiment station is over-organization. It is our wish to develop a large department, to have many assistants, to attack many subjects, to attend many meetings. All this is laudable, and, to avoid dispute, we will assume that it is necessary; yet even then it is possible to do something to lessen the burden of mere executive effort. There is crying need to lighten this burden, for we are spoiling our good specialists. by making business men of them. I contend that it is wise, both for good teaching and for real efficiency in experiment and research, that a specialist have only such executive duties as pertain to his specialty. As rapidly as possible, I would break up agronomy, horticulture, and all other customary arbitrary departments into their units, letting each man have the headship of his particular unit and of no other. In other words, I would let each man attend to his own business. Agronomy is not a unit; nor is horticulture; nor is animal husbandry; nor is rural engineering. It might seem that this small dividing of work would tend to loss of solidarity and unity in the institutions as a whole, even admitting the wisdom of allowing each man to devote