State Agricultural Society. 313 



AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES IN THE UNITED STATES. 



Hon. I. N. Hoag, Corresponding Secretary, etc.: 



Your request that I would furnish a statement of the working con- 

 dition of the various agricultural colleges of the country at the present 

 time, and the prospects of the agricultural department of the University 

 of California, for j'our forthcoming volume, I cheerfully comply with. I 

 have received the annual catalogues of nearly all of them, and the recent 

 visit of General Horace Capron, late head of the Agricultural Bureau at 

 AVashington, who made a tour of inspection among them hefore leaving 

 the country to introduce the best features of our agricultural progress 

 among the Japanese, enables me to give you a summary of his personal 

 examinations. 



I will name them in what he considers the order of their excellence, 

 taking the time since the organization and means employed fully into 

 account. 



Massachusetts Agricultural College, at Amherst, endowed by two 

 thirds of the Congressional grant (the other third going to the Institute 

 of Technology at Boston), one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars; 

 gift of county, seventy-nve thousand dollars; State of Massachusetts, 

 one hundred and twenty thousand dollars; to which was added by the 

 Legislature of last Winter one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and 

 from private individuals enough to make a productive fund of five hun- 

 dred thousand dollars. Chartered April, eighteen hundred and sixty- 

 three; opened to students in eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. January 

 first, eighteen hundred and seventy-one, had one hundred and forty- 

 seven students, of whom thirty were in the fourth or senior class. Two 

 weeks ago the original twenty-seven who first entered received the 

 honors of the institution. Its real estate is valued at one hundred and 

 ninety-six thousand and five hundred dollars. Its live stock, vehicles, 

 and implements, fifteen thousand dollars. Of this stock the herd 

 book shows fourteen short horns, five Aj-rshires, four Devons, and four 

 Jerseys, twenty-seven grade cattle, twenty-seven Southdown sheep, 

 nineteen swine of the Suffolk and Chester White breeds, and six horses. 



Eighteen dollars a term is charged for tuition. The necessary 

 annual expenses of students are from two hundred and fifty dollars to 

 three hundred dollars. All the County and District Agricultural 

 Societies of the State own scholarships in the institution, and send 

 students approved by their own examiners, whose expenses are paid. A 

 labor corps is established for the benefit of such students as desire to 

 work their way through the college, and so important do the trustees 

 find this feature that they recommend raising a fund for employing 

 industrious students at a fair rate, without too strict regard to the 

 remunerative value of their labor, that habits of industry and a spirit of 



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