upon specific subjects, I think it will be better for you to transmit them to the professor in writing, to him at the college, and you will get your answers. We have not time

Mr A. C. VARNUM (of Lowell). Mr. Chairman, will the professor explain a little more fully the object and the advantages of the labor fund? I find a good many of the farmers do not quite understand it.

Professor BROOKS. This is an appropriation of $5,000 per year, made by the State for the purpose of giving assistance to students who are desirous of working their own way through the college. It is not charity, but money that the State appropriates for the employment of these young men; and a very large share of the students now there avail themselves of the privilege of the labor fund. They can be given employment, the object of which is largely the improvement of the estate. As one consequence of the labor fund, two years ago we built in one single year about five miles of tile drains.

Mr. VARNUM.

All done by the students?

Professor BROOKS. Very largely done by the students. This labor fund has two important advantages: it enables the young men to earn their own way, and those are the ones we want to help; and it enables us to carry out the work of improving the estate much more rapidly than we could otherwise do. The labor fund is not sufficient; we are obliged to refuse young men work simply because the money is all expended. The money was entirely expended early in November of this year. It ought to be double that. Sometimes a young man comes to me and says, “I have got to leave the college. I am dependent on what I earn. I must earn enough to pay my own board. If I can't do that, I must leave." I have suggested to the faculty that they be allowed to work, and it be credited to them on the books and carried over; but you will see where that will land us another year.

Mr. MCINTOSH. I think we ought to send a representative to the Legislature to put this matter before them. I believe in employing every student there that wants to work. It is the man that does not want to work that most

of the trouble comes from all over the country now. I like to encourage men to be well educated, to be practical, which is most important of all.

Mr. APPLETON. Mr. Chairman, I should like to say a word for the labor fund in another way. In the classical colleges they have funds, and the men who show their mental ability are given an interest in those funds. At our college that $5,000 a year represents the income from the State, and that is given to men at the college in proportion as they show their ability and readiness to do physical work simply. It is a bonus for men who are doing physical work.

President GOODELL. I should like to say just one more word. Allusion has been made by Mr. Appleton to the scholarships that are given in the classical colleges. In the classical colleges it is, in other words, a premium to men to go there to college, and they do not work for it in return. It is a premium on laziness. It is not so in the agricultural college. For every cent of money that is paid out to those boys we get an honest equivalent in labor that comes back in return, to the State. It is not charity. It is simply assisting young men to get an education that they could not get in any other way whatever.

Mr. APPLETON. I do not understand the president takes exception to what I say?

President GOODELL. Not at all. I only want to make the distinction between the two.

Mr. E. MOORE (of Worcester). Do they intend to incorporate instruction with their mental labor and their physical labor? Is it to help them in any degree?

Professor BROOKS. Much of the work which is carried on is instructive; for instance, that to which I alluded, -the work in tile draining. Most of the men there had never seen anything of such work, and by actually engaging in it and seeing all the various operations connected with it, they learned a great deal. But these young men must work whenever they have an opportunity, every day and all the time. It is not possible to make all the work they engage in instructive. They must take hold of anything that needs to be done at the time when they have leisure to do it.

Professor BROOKS. To some extent.

Mr. MOORE. Did they employ students to carry on the engineering in the tile draining?

Professor BROOKS. Yes, the work has been done entirely by the students; and I have students now employed under the labor fund in making a careful survey of the whole estate and mapping it.

President GOODELL. How many miles of tile drain were made by students?

Professor BROOKS. We have something like ten miles, done within the last three or four years.

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, we must pass on to the next subject, as the time is going fast,—the "Work of the State Agricultural Experiment Station." We have a gentleman with us who is very familiar with that subject, and I take pleasure in introducing to you Dr. C. A. GOESSMANN, director of the Massachusetts State Agricultural Experiment Station.

ON THE WORK CARRIED ON AT THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION DURING 1892.

BY DR. C. A. GOESSMANN, DIRECTOR.

Mr. CHAIRMAN, MEMBERS OF THE STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: - I am instructed by Secretary Wm. R. Sessions to speak to you of the work carried on at the Massachusetts State Agricultural Experiment Station during the present year, 1892, and it gives me pleasure to comply with his request.

The State Agricultural Experiment Station was established by an act of the State Legislature in 1882; the Board of Control, to whom the supervision of the station was assigned, met during the autumn of the same year, and made provisions to begin actual work upon the grounds of the station April 1, 1883.

The work since carried on at the station, with the consent of the Board of Control, is published in accordance with our State laws regarding this matter in the form of periodical bulletins and annual reports. Forty-five bulletins and nine annual reports have thus far been published for general distribution, free of charge to all parties interested. The number of copies of annual reports published of late amounts to twenty-five thousand, of which fifteen thousand are sent out in connection with the annual reports of the secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, and ten thousand by the director of the station, on application. The number of bulletins annually issued varies from four to five. Each bulletin has an edition of ten to eleven thousand copies. Aside from these publications are also issued monthly circulars, containing the official analyses of commercial fertilizers. Four or five circulars of seven thousand copies each are issued during the year.

Some of our observations during the present year have already been published in short abstracts in the form of bulletins and circulars. A more detailed description of these, in common with those in other lines of investigation, will be ready by the first of January, making our tenth annual report.

A mere outline of the work accomplished during the present year must suffice on this occasion, on account of limited time. Taking the character of our work at the station into consideration, it seemed advisable to arrange the present discussion in three special chapters, namely:

I. Experiments with stock feeding.

II. Field experiments with raising farm and garden

crops.

III. Special work in the chemical laboratory.

As some investigations are continuations of experiments inaugurated in preceding years, it will be necessary, in the interest of a mutual understanding, to call your attention in some instances to some results and facts already stated in preceding reports.

I. FEEDING EXPERIMENTS.

(Milch cows, steers, lambs, pigs.)

A. Feeding Experiments with Milch Cows (Two.)

Cours. Five or six cows, grades, of different periods of lactation, served in each trial. They varied in age from five to nine years; they were secured soon after calving, and took part in trials until they yielded only from five to six quarts of milk per day.

First Feeding Experiment (November, 1891, to March, 1892). Average daily fodder rations per head :

Fine Feed Stuffs. - Corn meal, wheat bran, Chicago maize feed; or Chicago maize feed, wheat bran, cottonseed meal.

Coarse Feed Stuffs. English hay and sugar beets, 15 pounds each; or corn stover, from dent corn (Pride of the North), and sweet corn (Stowell's Evergreen), 12 to 15