dj:partment reports. 35 



hoiiey-produciiig plants. Tvvctity-niiie colonies were wintered last winter. 

 All tiie students are instructed to some extent in bee-kcei)ing, using tlio man- 

 ual prepared by Pi'ofe^^sor Cook. Some of the students make a special study 

 of bee-keeping, and a few of its graduates arc professional apiarists. Prof. 

 Cook was secretary and afterwards president of the State Bee-Keejiers Associ- 

 ation. The property of the apiary is valued, exclusive of its garden and 

 grounds, at $(J18.70, August, 1877. The library has three periodicals devoted 

 to bee-keepers, etc. 



MATHEMATICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS. 



Pure mathematics are carried only so far as to give an insight into tiie sub- 

 jects of surveying and the use of implements — that is, through algebra, geom- 

 etry, and trigonometry. In Allen's New American Farm Book, mechanics is 

 the t5rst named of a list of studies which the farmer should pursue. Every 

 farmer would put mechanics in a course of study, but every farmer does not 

 know that the shortest road to even an elementary knowledge of the calcula- 

 tion of forces and the direction in which they act is through trigonometry. 

 For the full discussion of these subjects the calculus, a still higher branch of 

 mathematics is required, but witli trigonometry quite a clear insight into the 

 problems of mechanical force can be had — without it, it cannot. 



The students having completed the pure mathematics, take mechanics, sur- 

 veying, leveling, plotting and industrial drawing. Civil engineering, embrac- 

 ing the properties of building materials, roads, bridges, farm implements, and 

 some other branches. The classes in algebra and geometry are so large they 

 recite in two or three sections. 



Here is ample work for a professor and an assistant. Dr. Pugh, the £rst 

 president of the Pennsylvania Agricultural College, and whose death the cause 

 of industrial education has much cause to deplore, assigned these studies in his 

 scheme to three full professors and three assistants. 



No one man has ever done all that has been done in all these studies, but 

 the persons specially employed up to 1875 for the work have been : 



Calvin Tracy, Professor of Mathematics, from 1857 to 1860. 



Oscar Clute, a graduate of the College, Professor of Mathematics from 1865 

 to 1867. 



T. C. Abbot, Professor of Civil and Kural Engineering from 1860 to 1861. 



Cleveland Abbe, Instructor in Civil Engineering during the year 1859. 



Cleveland Abbe has since largely distinguished himself as an astronomer 

 and a general scientific investigator, and he is now the meteorologist of the 

 Signal Service at Washington, having as one of his trusted assistants a grad- 

 uate of this College. 



In 1875 the Department of Mathematics and Civil Engineering was put in 

 charge of Professor liolla C. Carpenter, a graduate of tlie College and of the 

 University Course in Civil Engineering, under whose charge it is taken on a 

 more systematic shape. 



A short course of instruction is given in astronomy for tlie sake of the general 

 intelligence conferred on the students by the study, and for its admirable dis- 

 ciplinary use. 



The students have practice in what they study. There will be drains to lay 

 out (as well as dig) for many years to come, and hitherto there have been water 

 improvements, dykes or breakwaters, pile driving and bridges and dams to 

 build, foundations for steam pumps and other things to lay. Works of these 



