20 BOAED OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



mental work as any college or scientific school within my knowledge. 

 "While it does not reject any faithful student of average capacity, it 

 is not, and will not be made, an asylum for incapables. It was not 

 established to teach what are sometimes called the common English 

 branches, such as arithmetic, geography, history, and the like. 

 Our common-school system is supposed to bring a fair education 

 in these subjects within the reach of every citizen, and it would 

 be obviously a confession that the money spent on that system was 

 wasted, to establish a special school to teach what the common 

 schools were intended to teach. 



Permit me at this point to allude to another mistaken idea which 

 I find is somewhat prevalent concerning the School. It is that new 

 classes are made up at the beginning of every term — after the 

 fashion of the district school or the country academy. Such is 

 not the case. Our students can accomplish the work laid out for 

 them only by beginning at once upon their entrance a systematic 

 course of study and continuing it without interruption to the end 

 of the course. New stiidies are of course taken up from time 

 to time, but they are so arranged that one thing introduces an- 

 other, while some of the studies are continued through all three 

 terms of the school year. In short, we have a carefully-planned 

 course of study continuing for two years, and not a succession of 

 six terms of study. 



But certainly by this time you will be ready to ask what the 

 Storrs Agricultural School is. I do not know that I can answer 

 the question better than by giving a somewhat detailed account 

 of the course of study and methods of instruction, both in-doors 

 and out. 



The student who enters the junior class begins at once the study 

 of Chemistry and continues it throughout the year. He makes per- 

 sonal acquaintance in the chemical laboratory with those elements 

 and compounds which chiefly enter into the composition of soil, air, 

 plant, animal, and fertilizer, and whose properties he must under- 

 stand if he would study intelligently the laws of animal and vege- 

 table life. I venture to take time at this point to describe, briefly, 

 the method pursued in teaching this subject, since it is typical of that 

 pursued in all. For the first lesson the present junior class was 

 assembled in the laboratory, each provided with a lead-pencil and 

 a scribbhng pad. After having their places assigned, and being 

 told the names of a few common pieces of apparatus, they were 



