EEPOETS OF DEPAETMENTS. 21 



ground, — a ground, by the way, prescribed by a State law, which no member of 

 the Board or the Faculty had any hand in framing. 



The requirements for admission are so low that the graduates of the common 

 schools can enter ; the course of study is sufficiently wide to develop a taste for 

 reading in different lines of science, historj^, political economy, and philosophy ; 

 language is studied so as to impart accuracy and facility of expression, — powers 

 essential to any general use of knowledge ; the elements of those sciences which 

 need to be understood as a basis for the study of agriculture and rural engineer- 

 ing are taught more thoroughly than in most other colleges. 



Of course, the University and other colleges might impart this knowledge to 

 our students ; but only on the very unlikely condition that our students would 

 first attend elsewlicre, and the further condition of furnishing the requisite 

 additional instructors, and means of illustration and practice. These would 

 need to be, — books, perhaj)s, excepted, — about the same elsewhere as here. 

 Our classes are full large for our instructor in each study, and could be added 

 to no other cbllege without a corresponding enlargement of the faculty. Work- 

 ing laboratories in chemistry, and other branches are full, and should be 

 enlarged at the University or in this College, as students apply for room. Such 

 enlargements and mcrease of instructors can ])e made as cheaply to the State 

 here as elsewhere. 



No colleges in tlie Stats have courses equivalent to our courses in agriculture, 

 botany, horticulture, agricultural chemistry, meteorology, and entomology, 

 while, by large modifications of many of the other studies, they are made to 

 conform to and contril)ute to the main objects of tlie institution. Out of door 

 instruction is constantly imparted in connection with tlie three hours daily man- 

 ual labor required of all the students. The general character of the instruc- 

 tion, and the spirit of the place, is agricultural ; all other studies are made 

 subservient. 



The name of the institution is of less account than the work it does. It is 

 educating a class of farmers' sons who could not or would not go elsewhere. 

 Although it exercises no censorship over their vocation, it returns to the farms 

 as large a proportion, it is believed, of its graduates as the law schools of our 

 country send into law oSices, or medical schools into the practice of medicine, 

 and forty per cent more than the other institutions of the land ; and is doing 

 this in spite of contrary customs, inherited through centuries. 



The colleo^e needs enlaro-ement. I believe the entire fund that shall be real- 

 ized from the congressional grant is not more than sufllcient for the support of 

 one good agricultural school. Its agricultural library, its collections of animals, 

 plants, and implements, its experiments, with additional professorships of stock- 

 breeding, veterinary, chemistry, pomology, forestry, apiculture, physics, eco- 

 nomic geology, rural engineering, landscape gardening, will more than absorb 

 all funds it is ever likely to command. 



Education in this line being new, and as a general thing undesired by the 

 ones who ought to possess it, is the very reason why the college should be made 

 able to render it attractive, thorough, and practical. 



