sented, including the Forest Service, the Weather Bureau, the Nutrition Investigations of this Office, the Office of Public Roads, and the Bureaus of Animal Industry, Plant Industry, Soils, Entomology, and Chemistry. One feature which attracted much attention was a cattle dipping tank with which daily demonstrations in tick eradication were given. Some very striking exhibits were also made by many of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, as well as by other educational institutions. The station exhibits for the most part dealt especially with some one important phase of their work. Thus, Cornell gave special prominence to plant breeding, Kansas to animal husbandry, Rhode Island to the use of lime and other fertilizers, and Ohio to soil fertility. A model rural community center from Illinois attracted much attention, as did an exhibit by Winthrop College of three model farms for southern conditions. Much prominence was also accorded the boys' corn clubs and girls' tomato clubs. Miscellaneous. A new journal of plant breeding, Zeitschrift für Pflanzenzüchten, is being issued at Berlin under the editorship of Dr. C. Fruwirth, with L. Kiessling, H. Nilsson-Ehle, K. von Rümker, and E. von Tschermak as associate editors. The journal is the official organ of the German Society for the Advancement of Plant Breeding and of the Austrian Society of Plant Breeding. Original articles, memoirs, and reviews are to be published, and contributors are invited to send articles to Prof. Dr. C. Fruwirth, Waldhof bei Amstetten, Austria. Officers for 1913 were elected by the American Phytopathological Society at its Cleveland meeting, as follows: President, F. C. Stewart, Geneva, N. Y.; vice president, Haven Metcalf, Washington, D. C.; secretary-treasurer, C. L. Shear, Washington, D. C.; and councillor, W. J. Morse, Orono, Maine. The next meeting is to be held at Atlanta, Ga., in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Charles H. T. Townsend has been appointed by the Peruvian Government director of entomological stations as well as governmental entomologist. A central station of agricultural entomology is already established in temporary quarters at Lima and the branch station in the Department of Piura is to be continued for the investigation of cotton insects. Walter Fischer, formerly of the Office of Seed and Plant Introduction of this Department, has accepted a position with the Argentine Government and will be located at Pergamino, where a 400-acre experimental station is being conducted under the direction of J. H. Cameron. E. C. Green, who has been in charge of the plant introduction investigations of this Department in southern Texas for several years, has been appointed in charge of a dry-land cotton station at Coroatá, Máranhao, Brazil. Dr. Carl G. P. De Laval, widely known as the inventor of the cream separator, died February 3, at Stockholm, aged 67 years. Fernand David has succeeded Jules Pams as minister of agriculture in France. ADDITIONAL COPIES of this publication procured from the SUPERINTEND ENT OF DOCUMENTS, Government Printing EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. VOL. XXVIII. APRIL, 1913. No. 5. The movement for the promotion of agriculture through public agencies has grown very rapidly in the United States in recent years and is constantly broadening its scope. Large amounts of public funds are now used in this way and there is incessant demand for increased appropriations for old and new enterprises. So strongly has the public mind been drawn to the desirability of improving our agriculture and the conditions of country life that legislatures are more and more liberal in their attitude toward propositions for adding to the work of the State along agricultural lines. Naturally attention has thus far been chiefly centered on the merit, or at least the attractiveness, of the individual propositions which involved the expenditure of public funds. Relatively little attention has been given to the broader questions regarding the best organization of the agricultural work of a State as a whole, or the relations. which the various branches of the State's agricultural agencies should sustain toward each other. The tendency, therefore, has been for each agency to push its claims independently and to endeavor to increase its importance by broadening the scope of its work at every opportunity. As long as the field was thinly covered and the aggregate of funds employed was small, this tendency attracted little attention. Growth, therefore, went on sporadically, and the competition of institutions was on the whole regarded merely as an indication of their healthy activity. Now, however, administrative officers and legislators and, to a certain extent, the general public are awakening to the fact that our agricultural institutions are not organized on any consistent plan and that they exhibit much heterogeneity of functions and actual overlapping of work. The competition among them has become more insistent and disagreeable, and their demands are more complex and embarrassing. Meanwhile a general movement has arisen which looks to the standardization of public and private business on a new basis of efficiency and economy. Agricultural business and agricultural insti 401 tutions are being inevitably drawn within the purview of this movement. Already there has been general legislation enacted with a view to the more economical use of public funds that has incidentally affected the operations of agricultural institutions, and in some cases it has been clearly revealed that this legislation had been drawn with little or no consideration of the peculiar requirements of such institutions. A point has now been reached where it behooves the friends of agricultural advancement, and particularly those who are actively engaged in the promotion of enterprises for such advancement, to consider carefully and broadly what is involved in the organization of a complete system of agricultural promotion through public agencies and how the branches of this system may be best governed and limited. Naturally the first outcry against the existing order of things is that there is waste of public funds through duplication of work. To remedy this it is often proposed to bring all the agricultural agencies of a State under a single control and to make the dominating feature of this control the business or financial management of the institutions, regardless of their character and purposes. Or the effort is made to separate the financial from the general management and commit the former to a special officer or board. Or a general board is created to manage all the educational agencies of the State, or certain groups of institutions, which may be of a miscellaneous character. Thus, a recently enacted law. in Kansas puts under a state board of administration, with three members, the state university, six normal schools, the agricultural college, and schools for the deaf and blind. A comprehensive measure now pending before the Ohio Legislature proposes to create an agricultural commission with four members, which shall have under its control all the administrative business of the State relating to agriculture, and also the agricultural college of the state university and the hitherto separate agricultural experiment station. To this is added the supervision of weights and measures and the enforcement of laws relating to birds, fish and game, drugs, and the practice of pharmacy. In some States existing legislation by its exact language or by the interpretation of the courts puts the agricultural college and experiment station in the general class of charitable institutions, or makes applicable to them provisions primarily intended to control the business of reformatory and penal institutions. In a few cases the States have made provision for studies of the problems affecting their agricultural institutions through temporary or advisory commissions. In North Dakota a temporary educa tional commission, created by an act of the legislature, was empowered to study educational systems in the United States and elsewhere “with a view to the presentation of a report which will form the basis for the unifying and systematizing of the educational system of this State, and thereby provide for the removal of unnecessary duplication of courses in the institutions of the State, as well as to suggest such legislation as will tend to prevent any unseemly competition among the institutions for appropriations." This commission consisted of the presidents of the state university, agricultural college, and normal school; superintendent of public instruction; lieutenant governor; speaker of the house of representatives; and one other member appointed by the governor. After a year's study the commission made a report, in which, among other things, it stated that as regards the university and the agricultural college," the conditions existing in North Dakota at the present time relative to the matter of duplication and rivalry are not serious." It recommended the continuance of separate boards for the management of these institutions, and asked for a continuance of the commission, because "any considerable legislation that may be undertaken in the future should be based upon a careful study of the situation in all directions by educational experts," and the commission "does not feel that it has any more than entered upon the general phases of the problem." In New York a state advisory board has been established" in relation to the promotion and direction of agricultural education and the advancement of country life." This consists of 12 members, including the commissioners of education and agriculture; directors of the agricultural college, experiment station, veterinary college, and three agricultural schools; a member of the state fair commission; and three members appointed by the governor. Annual reports are made to the governor. A recent report dealt with the teaching of agriculture in the secondary schools, and was made the basis of a message by the governor to the legislature, recommending the conclusions of the board to their "most friendly consideration." Inasmuch as our agricultural institutions have thus far been developed without any thorough study of their appropriate functions, there is a bewildering variety in the organization and work of institutions in different States established under the same general title. When attempts are made to study their status with reference to changes in their organization, and especially to transfers of work from one institution to another, it is natural for each institution to defend its present status. Under existing conditions it is comparatively easy for any one institution to get a large amount of comparatively biased opinion from the managers of other institutions to support almost any view of the proper organization and work of such institutions. The result is that the minds of legislators and the public in any State are confused regarding these matters and are unable to determine whether there are really any fundamental principles by which their opinions and action may be safely guided. The advisability of concentration of effort in education is a manysided question. The assumed advantage in the direction of economy, through which the strongest popular appeal is usually made, is often more theoretical than real, and works out to the doubtful advantage of the student. There is a recognized limit to the number of students that can be satisfactorily handled by an instructor in a section, especially in laboratory and shopwork, and there is likewise a limit to the number who can be accommodated with given facilities. The crowding of students in practice work, either by too large numbers in the sections or too close succession of classes, is only justified by necessity. In most of our state colleges and universities the instructors are already overworked, and the existing facilities are taxed to the utmost, or rapidly tending in that direction. The expense of providing additional facilities and teaching force to meet the growing demand will not differ materially whether this be done at one or at several institutions, nor will the cost of maintenance. Furthermore, the advisability of assembling very large bodies of students on a single campus is one on which there is pronounced difference of opinion, and is at least an open question. While there is undoubtedly unwise and unnecessary duplication and overlapping in isolated instances, the size and rapid growth of some of the large States emphasizes the advantages and the reasonableness of a certain amount of multiplication of institutions, and their maintenance should not prove a hardship. Educational institutions are not to be likened to factories and can not be financed and managed on the same basis as commercial enterprises. The public needs to understand this distinction, as well as the broad functions of such institutions, and the fact that greater economy and efficiency will not necessarily follow concentration. On the whole, wise regulation is a matter of greater importance, and will very often serve to correct the evils which are aimed at through combination. The first effort must be to develop strong institutions, which will serve the interests of the State ably and effectively; and it may well be considered whether the experience of the Eastern States, where institutions have multiplied and have likewise developed in strength and influence, points to extreme concentration as a logical plan of development. Before there can be any satisfactory solution of the problems of organization and work confronting our agricultural institutions, |