562 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



This correspondence-instruction is likewise experimental; that 

 is, we are endeavoring at the present time to determine just how 

 it can be carried on under our limitations and for New York 

 state. We have no authority by law to establish a permanent 

 or organic system of reading courses throughout our territory. 

 We have kept the names of the participants in all of our Sep- 

 tember schools, and we have the names of the teachers ^nd ofiQ- 

 cers in the various rural and village schools which we have 

 visited. In each of these public schools we have requested the 

 teacher to have the pupils write their next compositions upon the 

 subjects which w^ere presented by our instructors, and to forward 

 these compositions to us as samples of the kind and extent of 

 interest which the children may be expected to take in this work. 

 Both teachers and children have responded with surprising read- 

 iness, and the correspondence from this source which has already 

 accumulated is large and is an indication that the work can be 

 greatly extended with the most marked benefits. We have also 

 taken the opportunity to write to the various correspondents 

 who have been interested in our work, asking them certain spe- 

 cific questions upon certain bulletins which we have sent them 

 and which have been used as texts in the schools, particularly 

 upon Bulletins 119 and 120 (The Texture of the Soil, and The 

 Moisture of the Soil). This correspondence has been the means 

 of tying together the various agricultural interests of the Fourth 

 Judicial Department and the College of Agriculture of Cornell 

 University, and has resulted in a natural and organic union 

 which, it seems to me, it would be, violence to break. 



All this work, as I have said, has been experimental, — an 

 attempt to discover the best method of teaching the people in 

 agriculture. We believe that the most efficient means of elevat- 

 ing the ideals and practice of the rural communities are as fol- 

 lows, in approximately the order of fundamental importance: (1) 

 The establishment of nature-study or object-lesson study, com- 

 bined with field-walks and incidental instruction in the principles 

 of farm-practice in the rural schools; (2) the establishment of 

 correspondence-instruction in connection with reading-courses, 



