388 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



SO many applicants as there will be when it is known that we have 

 enlarged accommodations. 



Question. Is it desirable to have a very large number of 

 students ? 



Pres. Abbott. Our board say they do not desire for some 

 years, at any rate, for more than 300 or 350 ; and it has not been 

 considered a matter of very great regret that our numbers were 

 small, excepting in this one particular — that taxes are heavy. 

 The people pay the taxes, and they want a large number educated, 

 and all very right, too. It has been an experiment ; we have had 

 to ferl our way. We were put in the wilderness, there were no 

 other schools whose experience we could profit by, and I suppose 

 that three or four hundred students would not really have bee'n so 

 good for the institution as eighty during these years of trial. 



There is another thing to be considered also. It is not possible, 

 I think, for an oflScer to do well with more than forty students, 

 unless they are so well disciplined, so far advanced, that they can 

 get from a simj^le lecture, all the good which they ought to get 

 from a class-room exercise. If they are not well-disciplined minds, 

 (and very few of our students get so well disciplined when they 

 graduate), a course of lectures merely is not what they need, but 

 lectures upon which they are examined, ^and of which they have 

 to make notes, connected with text-book instruction if a suitable 

 one can be had. That is the kind of instruction which they get 

 and which they need. Now I say that a class of forty is as much 

 as one person can manage, who has to superintend and look after 

 the progress of every individual ; and a professor who will not do 

 that, ought not to be professor at all. If he will not interest him- 

 self in the progress of every individual, he is not fit to be a 

 professor ; and if he does that, and has a class of forty, and an 

 hour a day to examine them in, it is all he can do ; and it will 

 suffice to give each a chance to acquire that discipline which 

 comes from raising and answering questions, and so imparting to 

 others what he has had imparted to him. 



Question, I would inquire whether manual labor forms part of 

 your system, and if so, what has been its eflect ? 



Pres. Abbott. IManual labor M'as introduced the first day, and 

 has been there ever since. We do what we can to make it easy to 

 the students. That is to say, we require no labor in the forenoon, 

 'so that they may have the time when they are the brightest, for 

 books, lectures and study. We require no labor on Saturday. We 



