n as will appear advantageous to all concerned, and these
can best be brought about through such associations as are now in
convention here.

Without such plans there is great danger of such waste of energy and
means and duplication of results as will bring the work into popular
disfavor and invite disintegration, for already there is a growing
feeling that agricultural experiment is and will be subordinated to
the ordinary college work in the disposition of the federal
appropriations.

What is true of the national department as a whole in its connection
with the State stations is true in a greater or less degree of the
different divisions of the department in connection with the different
specialists of the stations. With the multiplicity of workers in any
given direction in the different States, the necessity for national
work lessens. A favorite scheme of mine in the past, for instance (and
one I am glad to say fully indorsed by Prof. Willits), was to endeavor
to have a permanent agent located in every section of the country that
was sufficiently distinctive in its agricultural resources and
climate, or, as a yet further elaboration of the same plan, one in
each of the more important agricultural States. The necessity for such
State agents has been lessened, if not obviated, by the Hatch bill,
and the subsequent modifications looking to permanent appropriations
to the State stations or colleges, which give no central power at
Washington. The question then arises, What function shall the national
department perform? Its influence and field for usefulness have been
lessened rather than augmented in the lines of actual investigation in
very many directions. Many a State is already far better equipped both
as to valuable surrounding land, laboratory and library facilities,
more liberal salaries, and greater freedom from red tape,
administrative routine, and restrictions as to expenditures, than we
are at Washington; and, except as a directing agent and a useful
servant, I cannot see where the future growth of the department's
influence is to be outside of those federal functions which are
executive. Just what that directing influence is to be is the question
of the hour, not only in the broader but in the special sense. The
same question, in a narrower sense, had arisen in the case of the few
States which employed State entomologists. In the event, for instance,
of an outbreak of some injurious insect, or in the event