Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/33

 SCIENCE.

��FRIDAY, JANUARY 1), 1885.

��COMMENT AND CRITICISM,

In another part of this number, Professor Hilgard takes exception to our views of the proper functions of agricultural experiment- stations, as stated some weeks ago. Yet ' ' to render to the agricultural population the scien- tific aid which they so sorely need when brought face to face with new and untried conditions,*' is precisely what we understand to be the object of experiment-stations. The question simph* is. How shall such scientific aid be best aflTorded? Shall the experiment-station seek to reach an empirical solution of one problem after another as it may be presented to it, or shall it search into the elementary conditions of the most important of those problems, and thus endeavor to work out a rational solution ? The view which we hold, and which seems to be indorsed by the paragraph we quoted in our comments of Dec. 5 from Director Sturtevant*s report, is that it should do both ; proportioning the amount of the two kinds of work according to the necessities of the particular case, but endeavoring to do as much work of the kind last mentioned as possible. We believe that work of the latter class should be held in the higher esteem, and that the constituency of the station should, if possible, be brought so to regard it, because its results are of vastly- more permanent value. We do not hold that it should necessarily', or even usually, be placed first in the order of time, or that it should ever become the exclusive work of any public ex- [jerimcnt-station.

Our suggested differentiation of agricultural experimentation would proceed upon a some- what different basis, giving to the experiment- station proper the working-out of scientific re- salts (empirical or rational, as the case may be) , and to the experimental farm the verification

No. 101. — 1885.

��of those results under the actual conditions of farm practice. We do not deny the advan- tages of uniting these two kinds of work in one institution when possible ; but the men who combine the high scientific attainments and thorough acquaintance with practice necessary for the direction of both kinds of work arc rare, and are likely to be rare for many years to come. We therefore hold, that, when such a man cannot be secured and kept as director, the disadvantages of segregation will be less than the disadvantages of having either the scien- tific experiments, or the verification in practice of their results, undertaken b}' incompetent hands. The separation would be in manage- ment, not necessarily in either time or space. There appears to us to be comparatively' little danger that the work of American experiment- stations will be too rigidl}' scientific, and too far removed from the apprehension of farmers. There is a constant pressure upon a station for immediately useful results, and any station re- fusing reasonable conformity to it will not enjoy a long life. On the other hand, there is dan- ger that this pressure for immediate and strik- ing results may lead to a neglect of the scientific functions of such an institution.

��The second series of the Johns Hopkins university studies in historical and political science, being the twelve numbers for 1884, is just completed ; and Dr. Adams, its editor, may congratulate himself on his continued success in grouping together the monographic essays of the younger school of historical writers, who re arrayed under his supervis- ion, and bow 'o one of Freeman's character- istic utterances, that ' history is past politics, and politics is present history.* Tiiese papers evince a new school of historico- political stu- dents, who carr^' antiquariauism be^'ond a dry assortment of agglutinated facts, and human- ize it by connection with social development. The study of institutional and economic history.

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