SECRETARY'S REPORT. 53 



acquired talents, each devoting himself specially to one of the 

 departments of science and thoroughly exhibiting all its relations 

 to Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts. 



The annual revenue derived from the national bounty will pay 

 the salaries of all the professors needed to instruct the several 

 classes. It will also secure occasional or regular courses of lec- 

 tures from the most eminent scientific men of the country, not 

 connected with the college. Indeed, if economically expended, it 

 will defray all the expenses except those incurred for the erection 

 of the buildings. For these the State must provide, assisted, per- 

 haps, by private benefactions. It is asked to expend a few thou- 

 sand dollars with the certainty of realizing millions in the increased 

 intelligence and consequent advancement of agricultural and all 

 kindred industrial pursuits. 



It will then provide a school whose doors will ever stand open 

 to all who have obtained the necessary preliminary knowledge. 

 No time need be expended in the attainment of any branch of 

 learning, not having a close relation to practical pursuits. 



The college will drill them some four years, and will then be- 

 stow its honors by conferring a degree of Bachelor of Science, as 

 honorable, as useful, as any title ever bestowed by man ; or it will 

 allow those whose time and means do not permit such protracted 

 study, to select those branches more closely related to their future 

 business. 



The Department of Chemistry will comprise instruction in re- 

 spect to chemical forces, laws of combinations, properties of bodies, 

 the facts and phenomena belonging to Inorganic and Organic 

 Chemistry, all being amply illustrated by experiments. In Ana- 

 lytical Chemistry instruction will be imparted in respect to the 

 analysis of soils, minerals and preparation of artificial manures. 



In the prosecution of this analysis, the student must have daily 

 practice in the laboratory, applying with his own hands the tests 

 required to ascertain the composition and properties of bodies, 

 thus securing a practical knowledge of the methods employed in 

 these investigations. 



Agricultural Chemistry will be principally taught by lectures, 

 illustrated on the farm as well as in the laboratory, whenever the 

 subject will permit, on the formation and composition of soils, 

 composition of plants as determining the chemical condition of the 

 soil, composition of the air, and its relations to vegetable growth, 



