No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 43 



as would be best adapted to farniei- and family, and we feel (^uite 

 safe in venturing the declaration that not many decades will pass 

 by until Pennsylvania will have established centralized schools, as 

 well as township high schools, to which the children will attend and 

 receive instruction more nearly in keeping with their surroundings 

 land better calculated to fit them for life's work. We also hold a 

 ladies' session, devoted to the interest of the country home, its sani- 

 tation, domestic arrangements, as well as the social environments 

 of country life. 



The farmers' institutes of Pennsylvania have long passed their 

 problematic stage and are today filling an important place in the 

 agricultural and commercial interests of the Commonwealth. Their 

 system of management, although not in every respect complete, has 

 been patterned after by many states in the Union. The continued 

 and increasing demand for instruction is daily coming to us from 

 every portion of the State, which evinces the fact that the farmers 

 of today are well aware of and alert to the importance of adopting 

 correct and improved methods in the conduct of their farm opera- 

 tions; also that agricultural chemistry and botany have within the 

 last decade developed facts, without a knowledge of which no tiller 

 of the soil can expect to succeed to any considerable extent. To the 

 work of analyzing and developing these fundamental truths and les- 

 sons the farmers' institutes of Pennsylvania are devoted. 



Very respectfully submitted, 



A. L. MAKTIN, 

 Deputy Secretary and Director of Institutes. 



