FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 185 



of plants groAvn at the college than on an ordinary farm, bat the methods em- 

 ployed are moi'e various. The comparison of breeds of cattle, the budding and 

 grafting of trees, growing of hot-house plants, the planting and care of shade 

 trees, laying out of grounds, treatment of forests, culture of ornamental 

 plants, management of bees, surveying and division of fields, are some of the 

 work that occur to me as illustrations of this wide range of work. Although 

 this benefit of our labor taken by itself would not take the place of that drill 

 which actual life on the farm affords, it is at least a partial recompense for the 

 loss of it, and is of too much value not to be taken into the account. 



3. By his manual labor the student acquires a working familiarity with the 

 sciences that underlie the various operations of the farm. While the subjects 

 of Mechanics, Chemistry, Botany, and Zoology are taught in the College as 

 sciences, those who give instruction do not forget the practical application that 

 is to be made of them to Agriculture. The selection of the topics to be dwelt 

 on in these studies is influenced greatly by this consideration. Thus the En- 

 tomologist chooses injurious and useful insects for class study, and gives to the 

 bee a thorough study; the Botanist in a like manner lingers long with the 

 grasses, and with other plants which an agriculturist should know. The sci- 

 ences are then pursued into their practical applications, into the construction 

 of machinery, drainage, bee-keeping, stock-breeding, and the management of 

 crops. Take for example the scheme of lectures on Agricultural Chemistry. 

 It embraces the formation and composition of soils ; the relations of air and 

 moisture to vegetable growth ; connection of heat, light, and electricity with 

 growth of plants ; nature and source of food of plants ; chemical changes 

 attending vegetable growth ; chemistry of the various processes of the farm as 

 plowing, fallowing, draining, etc. ; preparation, preserving, and composting of 

 manures ; artificial manure ; method of improving soils by chemical means, by 

 mineral manures, by vegetable manures, by animal manures, by indirect 

 methods ; rotation of crops; chemical composition of the various crops ; chem- 

 istry of the dairy. This enumeration gives the fourth part of the students' 

 course in chemistry and its applications, running through two whole years of 

 the course. Where during such a course of study could a student better be 

 than at work in garden or barn or elsewhere, where the principles he had 

 learned in his classroom should occur frequently to mind, where he should 

 stand in the midst of Nature's operation, with a partial key to the solution of 

 her mysteries in his mind, and where Nature should seem to be constantly put- 

 ting questions to him, and reminding him that through knowledge only can he 

 become at once her interpreter and her master? Yet this is but the course of 

 lectures of one professor. The lectures on botany and vegetable physiology 

 have as close a connection with what goes on around the student while at his 

 work ; the zoologist and physiologist is also as practical, and then comes the 

 two long courses of lectures on practical agriculture by the Professor of Agri- 

 culture. Where can the student better spend his time during this course of 

 study than on the farm and in the gardens and orchards of the College, hand- 

 ling the very objects he has been instructed in, and watching the operations of 

 Nature that he has seen described? 



It is a mistaken notion that a science is learned when the text book is com- 

 mitted, or even when the student can write essays and lectures upon the 

 subject. The president of a bank once told me that it took a graduate of a 

 commercial college about two years to become competent to keep the books 

 without oversight. You would hardly commit yourself to a ship which was to 

 be managed by a landsman, however familiar he might be with books on navi- 



