350 KEPOKT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



be met on tho farm; animal production and stock jndfjinfj; and dairy- 

 ing. The teacher of agriculture reports that the inii)lement dealers 

 have given furtlier evidence of their inter(^st in the agricultural 

 courses by oU'ering prizes aggi'egating $11*2 in value for a grain- 

 judging contest, open to all young men in the county, to be held this 

 winter, antl that these prizes have been supplemented by a $15 suit of 

 clothes from a clothing dealer. C\)ntinuing, he says: "I am well 

 pleased wilh the way the boys take hold of the work. We have 5) out 

 of 70 boys enrolled in the agricultural course, and I think most of the 

 first-year boys will take it up when they get to it in the course. It is 

 proving popular in the school and entirely free from the prejudice I 

 had anticipated at the outset.'' 



This is the nucleus of an important experiment in education. Nor- 

 ton is just in the edge of the great semiarid region of the Middle 

 West. Agricultural practice in that region differs materially from 

 that of the more humid regions on the one hand and from that of the 

 inigated districts on the other. The teacher of agriculture is thor- 

 oughly familiar with the agriculture of the region and has but re- 

 cently graduated from an agricultural college which is devoting 

 much study to the problems of the one hundredth meridian belt. 



A high school of a different type, in which a course of agriculture 

 has recently been introduced, is located at Waterford, Pa. Here the 

 first high school in Erie County w^as established in 1800, and here in 

 1822 was erected a stone academy building, which is still used as 

 the main part of the high school building. The township of Water- 

 ford has a population of 1,460, and about half of these (770) reside 

 in the borough of Waterford. The borough has its own elementary 

 school, but the high school is supported and controlled jointly by 

 the borough and townshij:). 



The high school, with its three teachers and three courses of study 

 (language, scientific, and agricultural), has an enrollment of 80 

 pupils, and 35 of these are in the agricultural course. This course 

 includes agriculture, five hours a w^eek for four years. The work of 

 the first year is devoted to a study of plant life — germination, plant 

 growth, plant food, reproduction, propagation, transplanting, prun- 

 ing, and uses of plants; the second year to a study of field, orchard, 

 and garden crops; the third year to domestic animals, dairying, and 

 soil physics, and the fourth year to the chemistry of soils and of plant 

 and animal life. Text-books are used in the class room; a small 

 library of agricultural reference books, reports and bulletins of this 

 Department and experiment stations, and agricultural papers con- 

 tributed by the publishers is in almost constant use, and lectures on 

 agricultural subjects are given before the class and before the wdiole 

 school by the instructor in agriculture, who is an agricultural college 

 graduate. But the feature of instruction w^hicli chiefly distinguishes 



