In order to carry out this idea we recommend the following: 1. That no stallions be kept on the farm. 2. That only recorded mares of individual excellence be kept, and that the following breeds be represented: French Draft, Clydesdale or English Shire and French Coach. 3. In the selection of the cows of the milk breeds none but the best thoroughbreds and recorded animals of individual merit and of the best strains of milkers should be purchased, and of the following breeds: First, Jerseys; second, Holsteins; third, Red Pole. We recommend that the following beef cattle be kept on the farm: First, Short-horns; second, Aberdeen-Angus; third, Herefords. 4. In regard to bulls of the different breeds we recommend keeping representatives of three breeds, viz.: Short-horns, Holsteins and Jerseys. 5. We do not expect to be able to keep a large number of all of the different breeds of cattle. We recommend that for the purpose of creamery and cheese factory, and to furnish the College and professors' families with milk, that the milk breeds shall largely predominate, and that the number of the beef breeds shall be sufficient for the purpose of illustration that is educational only. 6. We do not wish to be understood as making the furnishing of milk to the college and to professors' families the leading idea, to the exclusion of the creamery and cheese factory. 7. The predominant breed of hogs, in our judgment, should be the Poland China. 8. We should keep a small flock of sheep, dispose of all cross-bred sheep, and keep only full bloods of the Shropshire and Merino breeds. 9. To inaugurate and establish the above plan will necessitate the expenditure of considerable money. It is not expected that this can be done at once, but a start can be made. To do this we recommend that the cows now on hand be carefully tested and that all of the poor ones be sold and the money arising from such sales be re-invested in cows of the class above referred to, to-wit: Jerseys, Holsteins and Red Poles for the dairy; and as fast as practicable all other animals, horses, hogs, sheep and cattle now on the farm that are not recorded or eligible to record and of good individual merit, be disposed of to the best advantage and others purchased according to the above recommendations. - 10. The barns, hog pens and creamery buildings are in very poor condition and totally unfit for the carrying out of the plan outlined above. The barns and creamery must be repaired, and an appropriation for that purpose must be secured from the legislature. 11. We find that there has never been a thorough or systematic method of keeping the books of the farm department. Prof. Smith has continued the books and accounts on the same plan that his predecessors kept them. As a matter of education, for the purpose of teaching the students how to keep farm accounts, and in order that the Board of Trustees may know what the profit and loss is in this department, we recommend that a practical system of farm accounts be opened by the department and kept by the professor. EUGENE SECOR, C. D. BOARDMAN, Committee. The report of the committee was adopted, and in futherance of the policy thus established, an item of $2,200 for the repair and improvement of farm buildings was, at the November meeting of the Board, included in the list of appropriations to be asked of the legislature. In regard to the creamery, the Board decided at this meeting that while a good creamery would be valuable for the purposes of illustration, the time had not arrived when the funds of the College would warrant the expenditure, the present stock of the farm not producing sufficient milk to supply the needs of the College and the creamery also. HORTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT. At the meeting of the Board of Trustees in May, 1888, the committee on horticulture submitted the following report, which was adopted: To the Board of Trustees: In the matter of the recommendation of the President, in regard to commercial nursery work accounts, we believe that the College should not conduct any work specially with a view to raising trees and plants for profit. The work should be instructive and experimental, and largely confined to the propagation, collection and dissemination of new varieties; and while a reasonable charge should be made for articles sold, yet we believe that the keeping of strict accounts as to cost of production is impracticable and unnecessary. Respectfully submitted, GEO: VAN HOUTEN, Chairman. In May, 1888, the Board made arrangements for the construction of a fruit house for the horticultural department, the cost of which was ordered paid from the State appropriation already set aside by the Board for horticultural experimentation. The fruit house when completed, cost about $600. A contract was made by Professor Budd in 1888, with Mr. Miller, of Ames, to drill a well at the horticultural barn, where there had been no water during 1886 and 1887. The contract price was $1 per foot for the first hundred feet and $1.25 per foot for the second hundred feet. The rock proved exceedingly hard below the hundred-foot level, making the work slow and expensive, and at the depth of one hundred and sixty-five feet the drill was lost. Professor Budd reported that there was about fifty feet of water in the hole, that the hole had been cased, a pump purchased and that the water supplied was sufficient for the department. The bill of Mr. Miller for digging, casing, etc., amounting to $230.25, was referred by the board of audit to the Board of Trustees, and by them allowed and ordered paid from the State experimental fund. At the meeting in November, 1889, Professor Budd urged upon the Board the necessity of permitting the horticultural department to publish a bulletin devoted to a presentation of the latest results of its experimental work. The Board authorized the publication of such bulletin and made the necessary appropriation to meet the expense thereof from the State experimental fund. For a full statement in regard to the work of the department during the biennial period, see the report of Professor Budd. EXPERIMENT STATION. The act of Congress establishing experiment stations was approved March 2, 1887. This act can be found in full on page 178 of the last biennial report. By the following act, approved March 1, 1888, the General Assembly of Iowa gave legislative assent to the purposes of the congressional law, and established a station for this State at the Agricultural College: Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Iowa: SECTION 1. That legislative assent be and is hereby given to the purposes of the grant authorized by the (congressional) act of March 2, 1887, and that in accordance with the requirements thereof the State agrees to devote the moneys thus received to the establishment and support of an Agricultural experiment station, as a department of the Iowa Agricultural College, as provided in said act of Congress. SEC. 2. [Publication clause]. In anticipation of the acceptance of the grant by the State, the Board, at its meeting in November, 1887, had appointed Trustees Speer, Clarkson, Dysart and President Chamberlain a committee to take action in regard to the establishment of the station. This committee submitted to the Board, at a meeting held in February, 1889, a report which was considered, amended and adopted in the following form: To the Board of Trustees: THE STATUS OF THE STATION.-This was the subject of earnest study, investigation and consultation at the meeting of the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations in Washington, last October. At that meeting the committee to propose to the convention a system for the organization and management of agricultural experiment stations submitted the following, which, after a long discussion was adopted: 1. That all appropriations received under what is known as "The Hatch Bill," should be applied in good faith to agricultural research and experiment, and the dissemination of the results thereof among the people, and that any diversion of the funds to the general uses of the colleges would be a direct violation of the plain spirit and intent of the law, and an inexcusable disappointment of just public expectation. 2. That the experiment stations especially referred to should be so far separate and distinct from the colleges that it shall be possible at any moment to show to any authorized inspector or investigator that all the funds derived from the United States under the Hatch bill have been expended solely for the purpose of agricultural experimentation, according to the intent of the law. 3. That every department to be known and designated as an agricultural experimental station should be distinctly organized, with its duties and control clearly defined, and with a recognized official head, whose time shall be chiefly devoted to this department, who should be on an equal footing with the other heads of departments or professors of the college, and whose compensation should recognize the fact that the duties of the position occupy every month of the year. 4. That the publications of the stations should be entirely separate from those of the college. The quarterly or more frequent bulletins should give their readers the results of experiments as fast as completed, and only as completed, or as distinct chapters are completed. These bulletins should enlarge on practical points, such as the improvement or restoration of soils. the development of plants and the breeding of stock, when suggested by work done, even to the extent of repeating well-known principles and facts when these need to be taught. The organic national law of March 2, 1887, in section 1 thereof, makes the station a department of the Agricultural College, and the Iowa State Legislature has assented to the appropriation and located the station as a department at Ames. The director of the station is its head, and it seems to your committee that the State and national laws, and the laws passed by the trustees espe cially, p. 14-16 of our pamphlet copy of the laws, fix the status of departments and the rights and duties of their heads. It seems to be definitely settled by these laws that the director has the same independence of action that heads of other departments have. Your committee believe that he should have the same responsibility to the president of the College as the heads of other departments, except in the matter of absence from the station, and that in all matters he should be fully responsible to the Board of Trustees. Your committee believe that a standing committee of three on experi ment station should be appointed, and that the general lines of experiment should be approved by the Board of Trustees, and perhaps more specitically by this standing committee. Yet the final detailed plan of conducting the work should be made and executed by and under the general charge of the director. Also that especial lines of experiment in botany, chemistry, zoology, entomology, veterinary science, agriculture and horticulture may properly be carried on by the director at the expense of the station but under the immediate technical supervision of the heads of these several departments; so far only, however, as it can be made thus better to promote the common aims of experimentation and publication of results by the station on the one hand, and instruction and illustration by these other departments of the College. Also that this must be largely a matter of accommodation and agreement between the director, who is responsible to the trustees and to the public for the success and usefulness of the station, and the individual heads of these departments, who are responsible only for the character and quality of their instruction. Your committee believe that it will be better for the Board simply to express the wish that there be this mutual co-operation between the director and these several heads of departments, than to endeavor to prescribe any set of hard and fast rules and regulations that should compel the director on the one hand to assign, or other heads of departments to accept and perform any specific kind or amount of experiments. This will require mutual forbearance and concession on the part of the director and the heads of these several other departments, in working for a common end. Plainly, these heads of departments have just the technical knowledge that enables them to conduct eertain experiments most successfully. Plainly, it can be made to redound to the success of the station to utilize this talent in some way. Plainly, the trustees have a right to expect that it be utilized. Plainly, how ever, the details of such arrangements must be left to a mutual arrangement between the director and these heads of departments. LAND. We recommend that the standing committee of the Board be authorized to purchase not to exceed 160 acres of land for the experiment station, or to lease from the College farm such land as may be needed for the station, and that for these purposes the sum of $3,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, be appropriated from the experiment station fund. BUILDINGS.--We recommend that the building for office and laboratories be erected under charge of the standing committee and the director, and that it be completed before the money lapses to the United States treasury. STUDENT LABOR.-We recommend that in the work of the station student labor be employed on a commercial basis. APPROPRIATIONS.-We recommend that the Board appropriate the entire $15,000 to the purposes contemplated by the act of congress. By resolution it was declared to be the sense of the Board that the director of the experiment station, while the head of his department, is not a member of the faculty of the College, nor a member of its corps of instructors. The resignation of R. P. Speer as trustee of the College having been accepted, he was elected director of the station, his salary being fixed at $2,000 per annum, with an additional allowance of $200 for house rent until a house shall be furnished him. Herman Knapp was appointed treasurer of the station at a salary of $250 per annum. Trustees Garner, Dysart and Dunbar were appointed as standing committee on the experiment station. This committee submitted to the Board, at its meeting in May, 1888, the following report upon the organization of the station: |