An Agricultural Experiment Station.



at Washington, under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture, collects and publishes summaries of station work and thought, in condensed and popular form. Thus the petty farmer, from an isolated being, striving blindly against the Eden curse, has become one of a band of scientific workers, redeeming the Eden promise.
      In our extensive country there is, of course, room for almost endless variety in the topics to be studied and the difficulties to be adjusted in these stations; but a description of one of them will give some idea of the working of the rest. To distinguish it from the State experiment station already located on the college grounds, the experiment station of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, at Amherst, was called the Hatch Experiment Station. Apart from a slight misapprehension on the part of poultry raisers, who occasionally apply at this station for information in their line, the name has proved a satisfactory one. With the president of the college as director, with Profs. Fernald, Maynard, Brooks, and Warner in charge of the entomological, horticultural, agricultural, and meteorological departments, and with Prof. Humphrey doing special work in the examination of parasitic fungi, the station has performed its duties, issued its bulletins, and answered thousands of questions about plants and animals, fertilizers and foods, the gypsy moth and the carpet beetle.
      Among the many conceits with which fairy-story tellers have entertained their readers is one of a boy who found a miniature door hidden among the flowers of the meadows and through it entered the underground world, whose inhabitants tell their length by fractions of an inch. Any one who has lain on his back in the tall grass while a grasshopper swung into the field of vision, large as a horse, or a dragon-fly whirred like a bird of prey about him, can divine the origin of the fancy. It will return to him in the insectary, brought near to the diminutive dwellers in field and pool, tree and burrow. Here are monsters that crawl and fly, warriors mail-clad and splendid, the gauze of Columbine, the pranks of Punchinello. Here are larvæ eating for the remainder of their lives, mysterious chrysalids hinting at wings in their delicate outlines, pupa-cases written all over with strange hieroglyphics, and newly fledged moths and butterflies quivering with the effort of their recent resurrection.
      It is midsummer and, as in more pretentious resorts, "every room is taken." The long low tables in the laboratory are filled with wire screens such as our grandmothers used to put over cake, with jelly tumblers covered by thin muslin, with pill boxes, glass jars, and tin cans,

Durfee Plant House

Durfee Plant House

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