REPORTS OF DEPARTMENTS. 39 



Modes and means of classifying fruits by form, color, size, taste, twigs, leaves, 

 flowers, and seeds. 



Best management, — distance of planting, training, soils, etc., for each com- 

 mon large and small fruit. 



STUDEisTS' LABOR. 



Except the employment of a gardener, a foreman, and a teamster, all the 

 manual labor in the Horticultural Department is performed by students. The 

 raising of students' wages for regular work to a maximum of ten cents per hour, 

 has had an excellent effect in stimulating them to greater exertion. 



Our students work as well as they study, and generally better. A failure to 

 receive the highest wages is usually more keenly felt than a failure to receive the 

 highest marks for recitations and examinations. For want of a mechanic to 

 attend to repairs and improvements of buildings, there is a constant temptation 

 to keep at such work, a few students who are handy with tools. To the disad- 

 vantage of the work, we frequently change students from one kind of work to 

 another, that we may serve all alike, and give all a variety. Three students, 

 one at a time, have had charge of the garden tools and workshop. The tools are 

 all numbered or lettered, and each has its place on or near a corresjDonding num- 

 ber. At a quarter to one, students report for work in a special suit of clothes 

 suitable for garden work. They are assigned to work, and select their tools, 

 which are charged to them in a book by the student in care of the tools, and 

 when through work at four o'clock, and the tools are cleaned and put in place, 

 the number is checked off the book. 



One student collects and distributes fruit and vegetables at the Professors' 

 houses and the boarding hall. Another drives the cart horse for a month or so. 

 The juniors alternate, two or more at a time, in working six weeks or more in 

 the green-house and on the flower beds. As tlie garden work is so varied in 

 character, and a little at a time in so many different places, we have for several 

 years generally divided the students into small companies, putting the work in 

 charge of a senior or junior, who acts as a sort of sub foreman over the fresh- 

 men. The superintendent and foreman take in charge some special job of im- 

 portance, or one of them visits and advises the several groups of students. It 

 may be of interest to pass in review what all the students were doing in the hor- 

 ticultural department on three days selected from our work book. 



On April 15th a gang of five Juniors, with the foreman, were pruning apple 

 trees ; six were raking leaves on the lawn, and trimming borders of drives ; 

 three hoed the ridges away from small trees in the nursery ; three worked in 

 the green-house ; two ground tools ; three sowed onions ; one showed visitors 

 about; two cared for the College chapel and recitation rooms; four loaded 

 clay on wagons to put in the bottom of flower beds. 



On July 15th the work book shows the following distribution of students : 

 Ten raked and hoed over about half of the vegetable garden ; one put Paris 

 green on potatoes ; two rubbed sprouts from apple trees ; two picked peas ; one 

 delivered vegetables ; two worked in green-house ; one looked after tools ; one 

 run the laAvn mower ; two put in a brick partition in the seed loft ; four helped 

 get up hay on the lawn ; one showed visitors about ; the rest worked on the 

 drives. 



On September 20th four student? picked apples ; two worked at green-house ; 

 three dug experimental potatoes ; five dug muck for compost heap ; one cared 

 for tools ; twelve worked on the drains in new vegetable garden ; six shoveled 



