Chap. 268.—An ACT establishing the Virginia | truck experiment station; pro-
viding for the appointment of a board of directors thereof, and prescribing
the powers and duties of the said board; also providing for the control
and maintenance of the Eastern Shore experiment station located near Onley.
Accomac county. (H B 312]

| Approved March 19, 1920.

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That the
Virginia truck experiment station, located in Princess Anne county,
near the city of Norfolk, is hereby established as a permanent State
institution. .

2. The said station shall conduct researches on the physiology of
plants and the diseases to which they are subject, and on remedies for
such diseases. In like manner investigations looking to the control
and.eradication of insect pests shall be undertaken. The compara-
tive advantage of rotative cropping, the capacity of new plants for
acclimatization, the improvement of varieties through plant breed-
ing and selection, and the utility of manures, natural and artificial,
shall all be considered with such other researches bearing directly
on the interests of the truck growers of the State as may be deemed
advisable; and the information thus acquired shall be disseminated.

_ 3. The said experiment station shall be under the control of a
board of directors consisting of five members. Two of the said’ mem-
bers shall be the chairman of the board of control of the Virginia
agricultural experiment station at Blacksburg.and the president of the
Virginia Agricultural. and Mechanical College and Polytechnic In-
stitute, respectively, who shall be members ex-officio, and the remain-
ing three members shall be appointed by the governor subject to con-
firmation by the senate. Two of the members appointed by the gov-
ernor shall be selected from the membership of the Southern Produce
Company of Norfolk, and the third member so appointed shall be
selected from the membership of the Eastern Shore of Virpinia
Produce Exchange, of Onley, Virginia. The terms of office of the
appointive members shall be four years or until their successors shall
have been appointed and qualified. The members of the board of
directors shall serve without compensation and shall name one of
their member chairman. The board shall also appoint a secretary,
who may or may not be a member of the board, and prescribe his
duties. Each member of the board, however, shall be entitled to be
reimbursed for his actual expenses in attending meetings of the board.
Three members of the board shall constitute a quorum for the trans-
action of business. The board shall hold at least one meeting an-
nually at the office of the said Virginia truck experiment station, and
such other meetings as may be necessary shall be held at such times
and places as any three members of the board may designate.

4. It shall be the duty of said board of directors to control and
supervise the management and work of said Virginia truck experi-
ment station; to employ a suitable man with the proper scientific
training as director, who shall have direct supervision of all activi-
ties of the station, and to employ such other scientific staff and as-
sistants as may be necessary for the proper operation of the said
experiment station and to prescribe their duties and fix their com-
pensation, to the extent not otherwise provided by law, and to do such
other things as may be necessary for the proper conduct of said experi-
ment station.

5. The principal office of the said Virginia truck experiment sta-
tion shall be located on the property leased by the said Southern
Produce Company to the board of agriculture and immigration of the
Commonwealth of Virginia for the purpose of the Virginia truck ex-
periment station under date of February twenty-seventh, nineteen hun-
dred and seven, and on which said station is now located; provided,
however, that the Southern Produce Company shall convey in fee to
the Commonwealth or lease to the Commonwealth for a period of
ninety-nine years, without rent, renewable forever, so long as used for
a truck experiment station, the land on which the said truck experi-
ment station is now located, near the city of Norfolk, in Princess
Anne county, Virginia, which was conveyed to the Southern Produce
Company by deed from C. F. Hodgman and wife dated February
twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and seven, and recorded in the clerk’s
office of Princess Anne county, the said deed of conveyance or lease
to contain a provision by which the said land shall revert to the
Southern Produce Company in the event that and whenever the
State shall fail continuously for one calendar year to operate said
experiment station on said land. If the said land be leased to the
Commonwealth and not conveyed, as aforesaid, the Commonwealth
will save the said Southern Produce Company harmless from all State
and local taxation of the property so leased so long as the same is
used by it for the purpose of operating the Virginia truck experi-
ment station.

6. The board of directors of the Virginia truck experiment station
shall also have the management and control of the Eastern Shore ex-
periment station, said Eastern Shore experiment station now operated
near Onley, Accomac county, on land leased for a period of ten years
from the first day of January, nineteen hundred and eighteen, to the
first day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-eight, by N. F.
Walter and wife, of the county of Accomac, to the State board of
agriculture and immigration, by indenture dated May twenty-first,
mneteen hundred and seventeen; and the board of supervisors of the
county of Accomac having by resolution adopted on the tenth day of
February, nineteen hundred and twenty, agreed to appropriate the sum
of three hundred and fifty dollars annually, beginning with the year
nineteen hundred and twenty, for the term of eight years to pay the
rent accruing under the lease aforesaid, the action of the said board
of supervisors is hereby ratified and confirmed. Furthermore, the
said action shall be considered as aicompliance with the conditions on
which State appropriations are to be made for experimentation in truck
crop development on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

7. The Virginia truck experiment station being in need of an im-
mediate appropriation, an emergency is hereby declared to exist, and
this act shall be in force from its passage.