A^i^NUAL REPOET 



OF THE 



AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



To his Excellencij the Governor and the Honorable Council. 



The Trustees of the Massachusetts Agricultural College 

 respectfully submit their Eighteenth Annual Report. 



In the last Annual Report a detailed statement was made 

 of the efforts of the trustees of the college to contract the 

 field of its activities to correspond with its diminished in- 

 come and the mandate of the Legislature by reducing the 

 wages for student labor, by discharging a portion of the 

 faculty, lessening the salaries and increasing the duties of 

 those retained, and by deferring the procurement of appli- 

 ances to make the exercises of the recitation-room more 

 efficient and instructive. 



The resignation of President William S. Clark, whose 

 popular talents and prestige as a successful educator contrib- 

 uted so largely to the success of the college during the first 

 eleven years of its operations, and the two subsequent 

 changes of its executive head, making three administrations 

 in a period of ten months, were a very important part of 

 these modifications, and were sufficiently radical and influ- 

 ential to derange or stagger an older and more thoroughly 

 established institution. It is perhaps now too early to deter- 

 mine what is to be the ultimate result of these changes on 

 the college as an educational institution, or on its position 

 and influence in winning the community to such an accord 

 with its plans and purposes as to secure the desired acces- 

 sion of students, and the sympathetic aid of a liberal public. 

 The enactment of the Legislature of 1879, growing in part, 

 undoubtedly, out of the strife of parties to secure the com- 

 mendation of the people as the special champions of retrench- 



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