Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 197]

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200

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

house has been built for various kinds of work intermediate between the field and the office—handling grains and seeds; receiving, weighing, storing, packing, etc. The building is 30x56 feet, 18 foot post, and has a basement or cellar 8 feet deep. The main story is divided into four rooms, which are plastered. The upper floor is dropped 5 feet below the plate, thus furnishing a large dry loft for storage. The building has chimneys built from the ground so that it may be warmed throughout if desired. A wide platform, sheltered by a veranda roof, extends along the whole south side of the building, at which wagons may readily receive and deliver loads. Some apparatus for taking meteorological observations and soil temperatures has been purchased and put into position. I t will be seen from this statement that though the Station did not begin operations until April, a good deal has been done; and now, at this date, September 1, it is about closing up the work upon a considerable number of experiments; has others in hand, some of which will continue for a short time longer while others will not be completed for several years, and has plans laid for still other experiments to be taken up in the near future; with its working corps organized and a good plant, so to speak, it should do its share to show the wisdom of the Hatch bill, and may reasonably be expected to demonstrate its own usefulness. The officers of the Station desire to be in direct personal communication with the agricultural public, particularly of the State of Illinois. Information which the Station has upon any subject within the scope of its operations will always be given promptly and cheerfully. Questions will be answered directly by correspondence, and, if thought to be of general interest, the answers will be given through the bulletins, or through the press. But the Station cannot commit itself to undertake the discussion of questions which will involve extended investigation and experiment outside the lines of work which the officers of the Station have selected. Especially will this be true of investigations which have only a personal and private interest. Analyses of soils, waters, fertilizers, foods, etc., will be undertaken only as they come legitimately in connection with the regularly adopted experiment-work of the Station. The Station has published two bulletins, one in May, detailing the steps that have called it into existence; its organization and regulations; the fields into which investigation is to be pursued, and the plans for the season's work; the other in August giving, as stated above, the results of an experiment with ensilage. 10,000 copies of each were printed. The law provides that the bulletins shall be sent free to all newspapers in the State of Illinois and to persons engaged in farming who may request that they be sent. We have the names of over six thousand farmers on our mailing list and shall be glad to extend it so as to include all who may think it will be useful to them to know what this Experiment Station is doing.