While this work has been thus extending in the United States it has also spread over most of the civilized world, 728 such institutions being enumerated in other countries in a bul letin of the Office of Experiment Stations, pub lished in 1904. The only countries in which experiment stations were not found in that year were Greece, China, Turkey, Russia, Afghanis tan, Beluchistan, Mexico, Central America, Bo livia, Colombia, Ecuador, Patagonia, Peru, Uru guay and Venezuela. As was natural, there has been a decrease in the kind of activity which has characterized the European stations in nor mal times. The information available has been drawn on to a hitherto unprecedented degree. The forces of many of the stations have been drawn for the war and considerably depleted.
The European stations as a rule are con fined to single lines of investigation, and very often to inspection work merely, whereas the American station generally embraces several co-ordinate departments, each with a chief and one or more assistants and helpers, all working under the general supervision of a single director. Many of the European stations would be classed as substations in America. Another point of difference is that elsewhere the sta tions are very generally limited to laboratory work, whereas in America, England and the English colonies the laboratories are generally used as adjuncts to field investigation.
The rapid extension of this work through out the world and the large and constantly increasing sums of money devoted to it are sufficient evidence that it has obtained and holds the confidence of the people; but this position has been attained rather through the gradual substitution by the stations' investigations of demonstrated facts for the theories which bad previously held sway in agriculture than by epoch-making discoveries, although a few of these also are to be placed to the credit of these institutions.
It was the Rothamsted Station which dem onstrated that leguminous plants do not absorb and fix the free nitrogen of the air through their foliage, a demonstration which cleared the way for the solution of a mystery which had puzzled the student of plant growth for many years, and Dr. S. M. Babcock, of the Wisconsin Station, perfected a method of determining the fat in milk, which has been adopted throughout the world, and for which a medal was voted to him by the legislature of his State; but it is the patient, plodding work, by which a body of exact knowledge in agriculture is being slowly accumulated, which has been the chief factor in winning confidence and support.
On 15 Feb. 1906 a bill, introduced by H. C. Adams of Wisconsin, passed the House of Representatives by a unanimous vote, increas ing the national allotment to the experiment stations by $5,000 for each State for 1906, this amount to be increased by $2,000 annually until the total should reach $15,000. This bill became a law 16 March and the experiment stations re ceive $720,000 annually under it in addition to the same amount appropriated under the Hatch Act.