542 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, K. Y. 



an experiment, all of them are considered to have been success- 

 ful, although it should be said that one of them was not held 

 because of a conflict with a county fair. These schools have 

 drawn a limited number of participants, ranging all the way from 

 twenty to two hundred. I presume that an average attendance 

 would run from forty to sixty. The participants have almost 

 uniformly been the most influential horticulturists and farmers 

 of the neighborhood — persons who extend a wide influence and 

 who will give great popularity to any work in which they are 

 interested. In distinctively fruit-growing regions, and especially 

 in those localities where farmers' institutes, grange meetings and 

 other like assemblages have been held, these schools have been 

 immediately worth many times more than they have cost. In 

 certain other communities, however, especially those in which 

 farmers' meetings have not been held energetically, and in graz- 

 ing regions, these schools have, in my opinion, been of too tech- 

 nical or special character to produce the greatest amount of good. 

 As a result of the holding of many of these schools, I am now of 

 the opinion that they cannot be used as primary factors in uni- 

 versity extension; they are capable of accomplishing a great 

 amount of good when the community' has been awakened by 

 simpler and more elementary means. I should therefore con- 

 sider that they could serve their best uses when they are given 

 as a reward to those communities in which the greatest amount 

 of interest in reading courses, in horticultural clubs, institutes 

 and such other public factors has been developed. There are 

 centers enough in New York State where such schools can be 

 held with distinct advantage at the present moment; but they 

 should be rather the culmination of a series of extension teach- 

 ing efforts rather than a primary or preliminary means of 

 awakening the rural communities. 



During October a series of -meetings was held in the school- 

 houses of various parts of the Fourth Judicial Departm<?nr. 

 These were under the immediate supervision of Mr. George T. 

 Powell, .who was assisted throughout the month by Mr. John W. 

 Spencer, of Westfield. These meetings were of the type which 



