30 Report of the Director. 



The extension department becomes a bureau of publicity. The ex- 

 tension enterprises fall into several categories, the leading ones of 

 which are as follows: 



1. Special-Course Instruction. — Here may perhaps be included 

 various special courses in a college of agriculture, not founded on 

 full entrance requirements and probably not of full college grade, 

 designed for persons who have not had adequate school advantages 

 or have not the time or opportunity for a full course and who want 

 the work for its bona fide agricultural value. At Cornell, we allow 

 such persons to enter the regular classes in the College of Agricul- 

 ture; but this practice needs to be carefully re-studied both in the 

 interest of the regular four-year student and of the special student 

 himself. Whether the special student work, in our case, should be 

 considered an extension enterprise will develop with the progress 

 of the extension enterprise itself. 



2. Winter-Courses. — In the present stage of our educational de- 

 velopment and in the absence of any secondary schools that are pre- 

 pared to do agricultural teaching, winter-courses or other very brief 

 courses are a practical necessity. At Cornell we now provide five 

 winter-courses: (i) general agriculture ; (2) dairying; (3) poultry; 

 (4) horticulture ; (5) home economics. We need to make the winter- 

 course work progressive so that a student may return for one or 

 more winters. This will probably come about by equipping the 

 general agriculture winter-course for all undifferentiated students, 

 and advising students to return to pursue one of the special winter- 

 courses, or possibly to enter the special-course. 



3. Extension Work by Students. — Certain kinds of helpfulness 

 can be carried into various parts of the State by students, particu- 

 larly in the organizing of societies, reading-clubs, holding of meet- 

 ings, and the like. Students may constitute very good advance 

 agents if they are carefully chosen and are well guided. The stu- 

 dents in the College of Agriculture are now engaged in this work in 

 Tompkins County, which for the time being may be regarded as a 

 laboratory and proving ground for certain extension enterprises. 

 This movement may well be spread, and become a part of college 

 extension work. New York State is the proper laboratory for the 

 College of Agriculture. 



4. Reading-Courses. — The chief object of a reading-course is to 

 increase the reading habit to the end that the correspondent may 

 read not only more reading-course literature but more good periodi- 

 cals and books. A recent study of our own reading-course work 



