THE DEPARTMENT AND THE STATIONS.

Immediately connected with the question of co-operation is the relation of the National Department of Agriculture and the State experiment stations.  The relation, instead of being vital and authoritative, is, in reality, a subordinate one.  Many persons interested in the advancement of agriculture foresaw the advantage of having experiment stations attached to the State agricultural colleges founded under the Morrill act of 1862; but I think that in the minds of most persons the establishment of these stations implied some such connection with the national department as that outlined in an address on Agricultural Advancement in the United States, which I had the honor to deliver in 1879 before the National Agricultural Congress, at Rochester, and in which the following language was used: 

“In the light of the past history of the German experimental stations and their work, or of that in our own State of Connecticut, the expediency of purchasing an experimental farm of large dimensions in the vicinity of Washington is very questionable.  There can be no doubt, however, of the value of a good experimental station there that shall have its branches in every State of the Union.  The results to flow from such stations will not depend upon the number of acres at command, and it will be far wiser and more economical for the commissioner to make each agricultural college that accepted the government endowment auxiliary to the national bureau, so that the experimental farm that is now, or should be, connected with each of these institutions might be at its service and under the general management of the superintendent of the main station.  There is reason to believe that the directors of these colleges would cheerfully have them constituted as experimental stations under the direction of the department, and thus help to make it really national—­the head of a vast system that should ramify through all parts of the land....

“With the different State agricultural colleges, and the State agricultural societies, or boards, we have every advantage for building up a national bureau of agriculture worthy of the country and its vast productive interests, and on a thoroughly economical basis, such as that of Prussia, for instance.”

In short, the view in mind was something in the nature of that which has since been adopted by our neighbors of the North, where there is a central or national station or farm at Ottawa and sub-stations or branch farms at Nappan, Nova Scotia, Brandon, Manitoba, Indian Head, N.W.T., and Agassiz, British Columbia, all under the able direction of Mr. William Saunders, one of our esteemed fellow workers.  It was my privilege to be a good deal with Mr. Saunders when he was in Europe studying the experience of other countries in this matter, and the policy finally adopted in Canada as a result of his labors is an eminently wise one, preventing some of the difficulties and dangers which beset our plan, whether as between State and nation or college and station.