DEPARTMEI^T REPOETS. 



REPOET OF PRESIDENT WILLITS. 



To the State Board of Agriculture: 



Gentlemen: — I nominally assumed the duties of my jjosition, July 1st, 1885; 

 hence have but three months of the year to cover by my report. Haviug ac- 

 cepted the position with the understanding that I should remain at the State 

 Normal School, as its principal, till the close of its school year, I closed uj) my 

 duties then and reported at the college on the day agreed, my family having 

 preceded me some two weeks. In the meantime I had been appointed by the 

 State Board of Agriculture in conjunction with Mr. Chamberlain of the Board, 

 a delegate to a convention of Agricultural College and Experiment Statioiis, to 

 be held at the De2)artment of Agriculture in Washington, D. C, July 8th, 1885, 

 and for which due preparations had to be made. I was invited by the Com- 

 missioner of Agriculture, to read a pajjer on "Industrial Education," at that 

 Convention. As I had been fully engaged with my duties at the Normal 

 School, I had to take the intervening time to prepare the paper; hence until 

 my return from the convention, I was not able fully to assume my duties. 



Your delegates were promptly on hand at the convention and attended all 

 its sessions. Thirty-one States and Territories were represented, and the dis- 

 cussions were of great interest and of mutual benefit. Aside from the general 

 and individual benefits to the delegates themselves, the prime object of the 

 convention received a substantial impulse. This object may be succinctly 

 stated, as an effort to bring all the Agricultural Colleges and experiment sta- 

 tions into harmonious co-operation through the Department of Agriculture, so 

 as to assign and develop more systematically the experiments devised, and to 

 secure a consolidated report of the results. It was found that in nearly all cases 

 the colleges and stations were crippled for means, properly to conduct and re- 

 port the experiments; that the colleges following the manifest intent of the 

 act of 1862 conferring the land grant upon the States, had devoted the funds 

 in a large degree to instruction, rather than to experiments, and that while all 

 had sought so far as in them lay to pursue a line of scientific investigations 

 and experiment, it had necessarily been sporadic, subject to the prime object of 

 the colleges under the act, and the results of the experiments meagre and un- 

 satisfactory. The great bulk of the funds was exhausted by the pay roll for 

 instructors, and the leavings only were applied to experiments. It was appar- 

 ent that since the act of 1802, there had grown up in all the States a vigorous 

 demand, that the college work proper should be supplemented with a greater 

 development of experiment, and that in order that this should be successfully 

 accomplished, the United States should supplement tlie act of 18G2, by substan- 



