336 KEPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



botany, entomology, bacteriology and plant pathology, advanced 

 science methods, and chemistry. The purpose of the courses is to 

 train teachers for high-school work in agriculture under the New 

 York State law giving State aid to schools organizing departments 

 of agriculture, home economics, and manual training. 



THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 



There has been continued effort on the part of many agencies to 

 promote the various phases of elementary agriculture in the common 

 schools. The Legislature of Ohio passed a law requiring the teaching 

 of agriculture in all elementary schools and rural high schools and 

 provided for the appointment of four supervisors for this work. New 

 York is inaugurating a system of rural-school supervision for nature 

 study and elementary agriculture. In Oregon a new law provides 

 that the counties shall be divided into supervisory districts of 20 to 

 50 schools, and district supervisors who will promote the teaching of 

 agriculture are being employed at from $100 to $120 a month and 

 traveling expenses. In North Dakota the legislature provided for 

 State aid to rural schools teaching agriculture. In nearly all of the 

 Southern States rural-school supervisors appointed two or three years 

 ago have been actively promoting the teaching of agriculture. School 

 gardens have increased in number, especially in the cities and towns, 

 and a national association of school-garden teachers was formed. 

 Boys' encampments with agricultural features have been held at 

 State and county fairs and out in the open country. Boys' and girls' 

 rural-life clubs have increased rapidly in number, variety, and 

 membership. I 



Boys' corn clubs under the auspices of this department and the 

 State agricultural colleges have been extended over 13 Southern 

 States, with a membership tliis year of 55,000. There are also 1,400 

 members of boys' cotton clubs and nearly 5,000 members of girls' 

 garden and canning clubs, making fully 60,000 members of these 

 various clubs. 



In December, 1910, the 11 State winners in the boys' corn-growing 

 contest in the South were giA^en a free trip to Washington, where they 

 were entertained by President Taft, the Secretary of Agriculture, 

 who gave each boy a diploma of merit, and by Members of Congress 

 and others. The expenses of their trip were met by local contribu- 

 tors, bankers, merchants, and others interested in the improvement 

 of agricultural conditions in the South. 



The boys brought to Washington were from 10 to 16 years old and 

 each had planted, cultivated, and harv^ested 1 acre of corn, with a 

 larger yield than that secured by any other boy in his State. The 

 names of the 1910 wimiers of State prizes, the States in which they 

 live, and the yield of each prize acre are given in the table following. 



