UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 258]

Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871
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250 them. I have been for years collecting different experiments for the purpose of comparing, in order to get some underlying principle, and my difficulty is here : Each one is tried in just a little different manner from the other, and there is no chance to compare them. I attempted a comparison of Lawes and Gilbert's in feeding experiments with my own. He took pigs nearly grown up and fed them for eight weeks ; we took young pigs but an hour old and raised them, first feeding them milk and then corn meal. We got better results so far as the feed was concerned. When we took corn meal we did not try all the different kinds, but confined our attention to milk and corn meal. When I came to compare the results, they differed materially; yet, notwithstanding his experiments were tried in England and onrs here, and he had corn meal that was imported, I found a very marked agreement. They differed, and yet they agreed in principle. They agreed in this: that the animals consumed more in proportion to their weight in the earlier stages of the experiment, and gave a greater return for the food consumed, than afterwards. They are experiments wide apart, and each taken by itself would be, perhaps, of little value, but together they corroborate one another. There are many points I would like to bring up. It will not answer to experiment for the sake of our bread and butter. We must go at it as earnest scientific men seeking to develope the truth, and let it make no difference who is pleased or displeased with the result. We must get at it in this spirit, regardless of outside clamor. I know that farmers demand of the agricultural colleges impossibilities; I know they are expecting immediate results. A person said to me two years ago, " I do not think much of your agricultural colleges." I said, ".I am not surprised." He said u Why ? " I said, " Because you are expecting something impossible from it. You think we claim we can take a green boy out of the city, knowing nothing about it, and give him a little agricultural chemistry and physiology, and then turn him out qualified to instruct old farmers." He said that was about it. I told him we believed and claimed nothing of the kind. Agriculture must be studied, and our rules must be based upon experience. Prof. Swallow—I wish to say one word. I seem to be unfortunate. The point I wish to make is this—I may be wrong, but I wish to show that twenty experiments with twenty elements of error in them are not so good as two with no elements of error. That is the idea. We have forty colleges in this country making the same experiments, and in one-half of them there is an element of error which we know must be there, and the result will not be so valuable as if ten of these colleges