SKETCH OF MANLY MILES. 837 



fully stated that Dr. Miles did more to develop the general natural 

 history of that State (Michigan) than any other man either before or 

 since he completed his work as State Geologist." 



As professor of zoology and animal physiology, Dr. Miles is de- 

 scribed by one of his students, who afterward became a professor in 

 the college and then its president, as having been thoroughly inter- 

 ested in the subjects he taught, and shown that interest in his work 

 and in his treatment of his students. He labored as faithfully and 

 industriously with the class of five to which President Clute belonged 

 as if it " had numbered as many score." He supplemented the 

 meager equipment of his department from his more extensive private 

 apparatus and collections, which were freely used for class work; 

 and, when there was need, he had the skill to prepare new pieces of 

 apparatus. " He was on the alert for every chance for illustration 

 which occasion offered: an animal slaughtered for the tables gave 

 him an opportunity to lecture on its viscera; a walk over the drift- 

 covered fields found many specimens of rock which he taught us to 

 distinguish; the mud and the sand banks along the river showed how 

 in the periods of the dim past were formed fossil footprints and 

 ripples; the woods and swamps and lakes gave many useful living 

 specimens, some of which became the material for the improvised dis- 

 secting room; the crayon in his hand produced on board or paper 

 the chart of geologic ages, the table of classification, or the drawing 

 of the part of an animal under discussion." 



Prof. R. C. Kedzie came to the college a little later, in 1863, when 

 Dr. Miles had been for two years a professor, and found him then 

 the authority " for professors and students alike on beasts, birds, and 

 reptiles, on the stones of the field, and insects of the air," thorough, 

 scholarly, and enthusiastic, and therefore very popular with his 

 classes. 



The projection of agricultural colleges under the Agricultural 

 College Land Grant Act of 1862 stimulated a demand for teachers 

 of scientific agriculture, and it was found that they were rare. Of 

 old school students of science there was no lack — able men, as Presi- 

 dent Clute well says, who were. familiar with their little laboratories 

 and with the old theories and methods, but who did not possess the 

 new vision of evolution and the conservation of energy, men of 

 the study rather than the field, and least of all men of the orchard 

 and stock farm; and they knew nothing of the practical application 

 of chemistry to fertilization and the raising of crops and the composi- 

 tion of feed stuffs, of physiology to stock-breeding, and of geology and 

 physics to the study of the soils. 



With a thorough knowledge of science and familiarity with prac- 

 tical agriculture Professor Miles had an inclination to enter this field, 



