AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. An institution for scientific re search in agriculture. The modern agricultural experiment station owes its origin chiefly to the work of Boussingault and Liebig, born re spectively in 1802 and 1803, although the earlier work of Sir Humphrey Davy, De Saussure and others had prepared the way for that of these great chemists. During the third decade of the century Boussingault established and for a few years maintained a chemical laboratory on his farm, and there began the combination of field experiment with laboratory investigation which characterizes the experiment station of to-day.
In 1837 a young Englishman, John Bennett Lawes (q.v.), began making experiments in the use of bone superphosphate on his ancestral estate at Rothamsted, near St. Albans, Hert fordshire, about 25 miles northeast from Lon don. The success of these experiments led him to engage in the manufacture of super phosphate and also stimulated a desire for fur ther investigation, and after some years of pre liminary work, in 1843 he associated with him self Dr. Joseph Henry Gilbert, a young chemist and a recent pupil of Liebig, and the two entered upon a systematic line of research which has been continued without material change of originalplan until the present day. For more than half a century these two men worked together; both received the well-earned honor of knighthood, and before his death, which oc curred in 1900, Sir John Lawes made provision for the permanent continuance of the work, under what is now known as the "Lawes Agri cultural Trusts The feature of the work of Lawes and Gil bert which distinguished it from anything that had been undertaken, except the work of Boussingault, was the combination of systematic and long continued field and feeding experiments with parallel investigations con ducted in the chemical laboratory, in which the principal agricultural plants adapted to the English climate were grown both continuously on the same land and in various rotations, the composition of the crops and of the soils upon which they were grown being determined from time to time, and in which large numbers of animals have been fed over long periods and under such conditions that it was possible to determine the chemical elements consumed in the food and the proportion of each utilized by the animal. Extensive detours have also been
made into other fields of chemical research, especially that of the assimilation of nitrogen by plants. For many years several general assistants have been employed, including chem ists botanists, computers and other help. The entire expense of this work has been met by the originator, except that a chemical labora tory was presented to him some years ago in recognition of the value of his work.
In 1851 a small company of Saxon farmers, organized as the Agricultural Society of Leip zig, incited by the revelations of Liebig and Boussingault (q.v.), who were then in the full zenith of their work, employed a young chemist, Emil von Wolff, and started him in the experi mental study of agricultural especially those related to the feeding of animals. In a few years the government was induced to assume the cost of this work, and thus was established at Moeckern, near Leipzig, the first public agricultural experiment station in the world.
In the United States attempts at experimental research in agriculture were undertaken at the Agricultural High School, afterward State College, of Pennsylvania; at the Michigan Agri cultural College and at the Maryland Agricul tural College, all established between 18U and 1858, and later several of the institutions organ ized under the National Agricultural College Act of 2 July 1862 undertook some investiga tions of this character.
The first regularly organized agricultural experiment station in America was established at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., in 1875, under the directorship of Dr. W. 0. Atwater, a young chemist who had become enthused with the idea while studying in Ger many. For the inauguration of this work private initiative was necessary; Mr. Orange Judd, then editor and proprietor of the Ameri can Agriculturist, contributed $1,000 on con dition that the State should appropriate $2,800 for the support of the station for two years. This offer was accepted and work was begun in October of that year. In 1877 at the expira tion of this period the State assumed the entire support of the station, and it was removed to New Haven.