from requesting co-operation of the other
stations, nor is there anything to prevent the national department
from doing likewise; but in all organization results are more apt to
flow from the power to direct rather than from mere liberty to request
or to plead. The station entomologist may be engrossed in some line of
research which he deems of more importance to the people of his State,
and may resent being called upon to divert his energies; and with no
central or national power to decide upon plans of co-operation for the
common weal, we are left to voluntary methods, mutually devised, and
it is here that this association can, it seems to me, most fully
justify its organization. And this brings me to the question of

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