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 346]

Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871
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338 will not be found to be the best this year—so that it becomes really complicated. The first experiments are easy, and the results are all satisfactory, until you come to duplicate them. When you duplicate plats, and begin to compare between plats exactly alike and between those under different conditions, you then find the difficulty in getting at exact results. Mr. McAffee—That matter had occurred to me, and I can easily conceive of what the Professor has said, being exactly so ; but for all that it seems to me that here is a point in regard to these larger plats, and I am in favor of the larger plats I must say, even if we have to hire extra help to harvest. All you can ever get in this thing is not absolute certainty on account of these circumstances that render things doubtful, but you want to get a general average, as large as possible, stricken with as much accuracy as possible. We don't know how many people are going to die in a year to the thousand of a population, but the Life Insurance Companies come very close to it, because they have had the general average so many years they know about how the thing runs. They know the laws of chance, as you might call i t ; perhaps it is an unfortunate expression. They,know about how the thing will run. Now, we can go so far by a great many experiments as to get a general average. The idea has suggested itself to me, frequently, that it would be a very good thing to divide off a lot of plats, and raise A, B and C on those plats one year, and then change, something on the system that they have in Pennsylvania, and in that way get at the actual characteristics of the actual areas ; but it seems to me by subdividing areas into small plats, taking twenty to the acre for instance, we are making our labor much greater. Let us get the general average of that acre as a grain producer. For instance, we take the general average of that acre as compared with other acres of corn; the general average of that acre as compared with other acres of oats and wheat, and it is valuable so far as it goes. Now we consider that acre as either better or poorer than other acres, and go on with it. It seems to me of no use to divide the acre up into twenty plats, for if the argument is good that it should be divided up into plats of a foot square, even, or an inch square, I don't see where you are going to stop if you argue in that way—that because the land gives different results on different areas you must make the areas small. Let us have the result from the whole acre. I know from the appearance of that corn experiment that what the Professor said is correct. If I cut that piece up into strips and harvest it, 1 know some places will be poorer than others, and I believe I know the reason, but that is a guess of course 5