28 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



institution went into operation, there was but one course pro- 

 vided ; it has been broken up into three courses, — a course in 

 agriculture, a course in mechanical engineering, and also the 

 briefer course to which allusion has been made, which we do not 

 recommend to any young man who can, under fair circumstances, 

 take the full course. We say that unless a young man is so far 

 advanced that it is not necessary for him to go over the prelimi- 

 nary studies, he had better take the four years' course ; but 

 provision is made for such contingencies, where a young man can 

 only avail himself of a few months to attend to something that 

 shall have direct reference to the particular pursuit which he may 

 have in view. 



Then, with this division of the course, after the young men 

 have pursued their studies for a certain length of time; two years, 

 for example, — they determine what particular course they will 

 follow. The studies for the first two years in the several courses 

 being essentially the same, the young man then decides whether 

 he will take the course in' agriculture, in civil engineering, in 

 mechanical engineering, or take the elective course, and whichever 

 one of these he chooses, the intention is to direct his labor with 

 reference to that special pursuit. Those who take civil engineer- 

 ing, for example, work in the field. Those young men occupied 

 their hours of labor during the last term in field work, with transit 

 and levelling instruments, acquiring that facility in the use of 

 instruments which they must acquire in order to do efficient field 

 work. I remember that some of the young men run a level from one 

 of the college buildings to a school building about three-quarters 

 of a mile away, and returned, and the error was less than a five- 

 thousandth of an inch. That is engineering that would bring the 

 two parts of a tunnel under the Alps together without any jog. 

 You are well aware that in building the Mt. Cenis tunnel, or the 

 tunnel in Massachusetts under the Iloosac Mountain, the engineer 

 stakes his reputation upon the accuracy of his work, and in tun- 

 nelling through a mountain having a base of several miles, it is 

 necessary that the form of the earth be taken into account and 

 that very skilful engineering be done, or else the two parts will 

 come together with a jog, or fail to come together at all. I 

 thought that if those young men could carry a level three-quarters 

 of a mile and return, with an error of less than a five-thousandth 

 of an inch, they were doing pretty good practical work. Now, 

 the young man who wants to pursue agriculture as a profession, 



