Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 240]

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232 correct, for no result we obtain is absolutely correct, and only correct results can be obtained by carrying on these experiments for a great number of years. The system of experimenting as it has been carried on, has been a failure, and is of no value inasmuch as they have been dropped after they have served a certain purpose; they have not been carried on persistently year after year, thereby developing a principle in agriculture, and not merely the curiosity of some person who is experimenting. Now, in our experimenting for the Agricultural College in Pennsylvania, we have tried to avoid what the gentleman has clearly shown is an error we are apt to fall into, and become confused—that is, attempting two systems of culture, or putting in the same thing two objects. It cannot be done. We have failed on several plats for that very reason. The earlier experimenting was about a failure, just because we attempted to do too many things on the same grounds, and had more objects than one. There must be confined to each plat but a single object. If you have more you lose control of the experiment, and afterwards you have to experiment again to find out which of the two it is. Each plat, in any proposed plan, must be but a single experiment. In regard to the size of these plats, it seems to me that the plan of having them so very small is one that probably is more liable to error than in having them large, although there are difficulties on the other hand ; if your experiments are extended over a great deal of grotmd it is impossible, or almost impossible, to have them all carried along under the same conditions, but you can overcome that by going to extra expense. We try in all experiments to do this in one day, and in a portion of the day after the dew had gone from the earth, we try to get it a,s nearly in the same condition as possible, and if necessary hire extra help to insure this. There are accidents which happen— such as rains coming up—but those are things that no oversight can provide against. They do affect the experiment to some extent, but if these things are to be carried on for a succession of years, the probability is the next year one will be able to avoid this, and get such an average as will form a guide. The objection to the small plat has been stated: that if you make an error at all in weighing, or in the size of your plat, or in any particular, that is multiplied by just so many times as it is less than an acre, if you take that as a unit. If you take a larger piece, the multiplication of the error is not so great. We had some experience in the matter of small plats. One of our farms in Chester County, started before the one at the college, and