Extension Woek in Horticultuke. 167 



2. Teaching. 



One of the distinctive marks of tlie last decade, in educational 

 lines, is the extension of university teaching to the people. Prob- 

 ably no movement of the latter part of the century is destined to 

 exert a greater influence upon tlie form of our institutions and 

 civilization than this attempt to leaven the entire lump of citizen- 

 ship with the inspiration of higher motives. The agricultural ex- 

 periment station movement is itself a part of this general desire to 

 carry the new life to every person, whether college-bred or not. 

 But this movement, beneficent as it is, still lacks some of the means 

 of making itself felt. It must have a closer vital connection with 

 the people. The people must be made to hear, even though they 

 desire to be deaf. Good citizenship has a right to demand that 

 every person live up to the full stature of his opportunities. The 

 establishment of the experiment stations upon a federal grant 

 ensures stability and removes them beyond the reach of petty and 

 local jealousies and criticisms ; but the addition of a state grant to 

 the federal grant brings them home to the people and awakens a 

 personal interest in them in the rural communities which can be 

 obtained in no other way. If this state aid asks for extension teach- 

 ing, still more will be gained towards spreading the influence of the 

 stations. The results of the experiment station work must be car- 

 ried to every farmer's door ; and if he shuts the door, they must be 

 thrown in at the window. 



The greatest good to be derived from this experiment station 

 extension bill was conceived, therefore, to be teaching. So meet- 

 ings have been held and attended — nearly fifty of them in the last 

 two years — in w^hich something has been said of the new teaching 

 of science and the new demands of the times. This teaching has 

 not only been cordially met by the rural communities, but it has 

 been eagerly sought by them. The rural population is ready for 

 instruction, and by far the greater part of those who receive it en- 

 deavor to profit by it. The derision of " book-farming," of which 

 we have heard so much, has all gone, because the teaching is now 

 worth being received. In the light of our present knowledge it is 

 easy to see that most of the agricultural teaching of a generation 

 ago was wholly unsuited to the conditions which it desired to reach, 

 and it had, for the most part, a most meager foundation both of 



