both

That leaves an open space for the water to flow upon sides right into the drain. There is a current of water running on the bottom boards all the time. It works very satisfactorily, and makes a very cheap drain in a muddy bottom where it is difficult to make a tile drain stand. I think it is very much more satisfactory than it is to have the boards tight. These iron triangles are very cheap, and I screw the boards right on to them.

Mr. LYMAN. I should like to ask Mr. Stanley if, in his experience in tile draining, he has ever had any trouble from the roots of trees getting into his drains and choking them?

Mr. STANLEY. As far as my experience goes I can say that I have not, because there are no trees in the field, but where there are trees, especially willow trees, you will almost invariably find that they will send out roots in search of water, and they are going to find it if they have to go twenty feet, and when they get to the tile they will go into the smallest crack, and finally stop up your drain.

Mr. OLCOTT. I would like to inquire if any gentleman in the audience has met with a growth in tile drains which could not possibly come from the roots of trees, which completely filled that tile from end to end?

Mr. LYMAN. Last spring we found that some of our drains were not working. There were no trees within ten rods. The tile lay more than two feet under the ground. We found that some of those rank weeds, such as thoroughwort and golden-rod, had sent their roots into those tiles and completely choked them.

Mr. CLAPP. I have had a similar experience. I have not been able in some cases to identify the plant which sent its roots down into the tile. It could not be any of the rankgrowing weeds described by Mr. Lyman, for nothing of that kind was in the field. A neighbor of mine had an experience which was the most extraordinary that ever came to my knowledge. He used tile for an aqueduct to convey water into the yard for the use of his animals. He laid two-foot tile of the smallest size, cementing the joints very carefully.

He turned on the water before he filled his ditch, and whereever a leak appeared, he stopped it with cement, until, so far as any observation could determine, his pipe was tight from end to end. There was no chance for water to escape. He used that aqueduct for a year or two with great satisfaction. The water did not run in it during the summer, its source being dried up in the dry season. When he turned on the water in the fall it did not run. He dug up a portion of that tile, and his statement to me was that where there was no possible way by which water could get through, at all events from the inside to the outside of the tile, that tile was filled with a mass of living roots which absolutely clogged it, and he was compelled to take the aqueduct up and have his water conveyed through iron pipes. I have never used tile for that purpose, but I have used tile for draining, and it has become clogged in some instances where no roots of any trees or bush could possibly reach it, where no root of that class of plants alluded to by Mr. Lyman could reach it, and where it has not been possible to detect and determine what plant on the surface it was that sent those roots two and a half and three feet deep which found their way into the tile and choked it. This is one of the principal sources of annoyance to me with tile that has been laid three, four, six, eight, or ten years. I should like to get some information that will enable me to practically counteract that and prevent it.

Vice-President DAY. I am very sorry to be obliged to in terrupt this discussion, but the hour has arrived for another lecture.

The quartette then favored the audience with another song, which was heartily applauded.

Vice-President DAY. The next lecture this morning will be upon the Work of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station - What it is doing for the Farmers. You all know Prof. JOHNSON, Director of the Station. I have the honor of presenting him to the audience.

ADDRESS OF PROF. S. W. JOHNSON.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen, - The work of the Station during the year 1888 has been for the most part similar to that of the previous year, and to that of all the years that have elapsed since its foundation. We are obliged, as you are aware, by the fertilizer law, to analyze a sample of every fertilizer costing ten dollars or more per ton that is sold in the State. You are aware, doubtless, that the number of fertilizers is on the increase, and that the sale of fertilizers is extending. The places where fertilizers are sold, and the farms on which they are consumed, are constantly increasing in number, and we are thus obliged, year after year, to devote more and more time to work in this direction. During last year and this year we have been enabled by a sufficiency of funds to adopt measures which we should have adopted before could we have done so, by which we have secured a very full representation of all the fertilizers sold in the State. The Station during these two years has employed special agents, who have devoted themselves during April and May and a part of June, to traveling over the State, and visiting as far as possible every place where there is any considerable amount of fertilizers on deposit or sale. During the year 1888 our agents have visited 144 localities, and have taken 887 samples of fertilizers. All those samples have been sent to the Station, and all of them have been represented in our analyses. That is to say, while we have made only 240 analyses of distinct fertilizers, all the samples collected have been used in obtaining the final samples on which our analyses have been made. Collecting fertilizers in this way has been a somewhat costly operation, but this is a work which if done at all ought to be well done, and we are endeavoring to do it in a thoroughly satisfactory way.

Furthermore, we make it a rule to analyze each of these fertilizers in duplicate, and by different chemists, so that those errors which are likely to come up in work of this sort shall be detected by the independent scrutiny of two operators. In many cases these analyses are repeated several times. Instances occur where the results reported have been thought by the parties interested not to be correct. In such cases we invariably repeat our work in order to leave no possibility that any error has been com.

mitted, or goes uncorrected, and no pains are spared to make these results absolutely satisfactory, as far as it is humanly possible to do So. I am free to say that if the Station had done nothing else but this it has earned its money; but we have done more.

Before speaking of other matters I would like to make some statements regarding what I consider to be a better way of laying out a part of the money which we have been spending in the State hitherto for fertilizer analyses. There are now established in nearly every State of the Union, and in several of the Territories, Experiment Stations which are assisted by a Congressional appropriation. As you are aware, nearly two years ago the general government passed a law, which a year ago became practically operative, giving fifteen thousand dollars in aid of the work of Experiment Stations, to each State and Territory having an Agricultural College, or School, or Experiment Station, or which should thereafter establish such an institution, so that all the neighboring States now have, or shortly are to have, in actual operation Experiment Stations similar to our own. In New York, New Jersey. Massachusetts, and Maine, they have existed for some years, and now all these older institutions are operating with larger means and better effect. It is evident that the Experiment Stations of contiguous States, like those of New England, New York, and New Jersey, which are similarly situated as regards the sources, character, and supply of their commercial fertilizers, may with entire propriety combine their efforts in such a manner as to effect a more perfect fertilizer control than has hitherto been possible, and to do it with comparatively little more total outlay than is now expended, while by systematic coöperation and division of the work the labor of each separate Station will be greatly reduced. It is easy to see that by collecting samples in all these States of each brand of fertilizer, and by uniting those samples into one or two "sub-samples," as we call them, one or two analyses would answer for all this territory. These eight States, for example, instead of making eight analyses of each fertilizer that is sold in them all, would certainly need not more than three in one case, two in another, and perhaps but one in another.

There is a considerable number of perfectly trustworthy fertilizers which are bought by our farmers from year to year, in which no blunder or deception has ever been found. These fertilizers are most carefully manufactured by sagacious

business men, who, understanding that uniform quality in their wares is essential to their success, employ skillful chemists to analyze all the raw material they use, and every finished article they send out. For the Stations to analyze their fertilizers is rather a formality than a necessity.

There are, however, other manufacturers who do not use such care, and a practice is still in vogue, and smiled upon by the mercantile conscience, that has cost the farmers of this country a round sum in past years, viz.: Sending out an inferior as well as superior article under the same brand-the superior article going to the market where strict scrutiny is maintained, and the inferior article going "South!" But in most cases one analysis of any given brand made in any State, on samples properly collected in many States, will be sufficient for all those States.

In some States, perhaps in our own, new legislation will be needful in order to effect such coöperation, but the plan indicated is one that will relieve the Stations of a great deal of labor that can be more profitably devoted to other urgently needed investigations.

Another branch of work has been the analyses of feeding stuffs. A very important part of the business of agriculture in this State, as in all other States, is the use of our agricultural products for the feeding of domestic animals. I am astonished, when I look into some of our agricultural papers and see what extensive prac tical use is now making of a kind of information which twenty years ago was like Greek in a convention of this sort. The use of the analyses of feeding stuffs, the compounding of rations in which the nutritive ingredients and chemical elements of these feeding stuffs are taken account of, and in which it is a matter of no consequence whether corn, oats, beans, rye, grass, or anything else be the source, so long as what is used is combined to give us the protein, or albuminoids, the carbohydrates, and other elements which are common to all food in such proportions that for any given purpose of the animal economy a ration shall be furnished that answers that purpose economically and completely. That is the science of cattle feeding. If you take up "The Country Gentleman." especially, or any of the great agricultural papers, I speak of "The Country Gentleman" because that has perhaps taken the lead in this respect, you will find very full and able