36 STATE BOAED OF AGRICULTUKE. 



kinds arc usually pat under the supervision of Prof. Carpenter by the Board, 

 lie has made an atlas of tlie College drainage, and a record book, and is engaged 

 in surveys, preliminary to toiiographical maps of the farm. 



Many of the students arc competent to do ordinary surveying on com- 

 pleting the study here. No attempt is made to give a complete course of 

 instruction in civil engineering. Those things are taught A\-hicli are supposed 

 to be most useful for a farmer to know. The University is near for those who 

 would complete tlieir education in this branch of study. 



Of book-keeping only enough is taught to enable students to keep their 

 accounts accurately aud well. Mr. William D. Cochrane of Detroit was em- 

 ployed in 1859 as instructor and died at the close of the year. John (t. llams- 

 deli, now Judge Eamsdell of Traverse City, and H. D. Bartholomew have both 

 given instruction in book-keeping and lectured on commercial usages and law. 



The equipment of this department is meager. It jwssesses two compasses, 

 for one of which the students contributed 121, a level, a transit instrument and 

 some few other things. Through a borrowed telescope and on a borrowed globe 

 the students are helped to a knowledge of astronomy. There is some, although 

 but little, apparatus for illustration of mechanical principles. The College owns 

 about two thousand models selected from the Patent Office at Washington. 



The department has no class-room of its own, no place for the exhibition of 

 its charts and models, no working room for classes in drawing. 



ENGLISH LITEKATURE. 



The department of English Literature is in charge of Professor George T. 

 Fairchild, who, after a year's service in the College as an instructor, received 

 his appointment to the professorship in 186G. The department is made to 

 cover lihetoric, both in its discussion of style and in the higher study of the 

 invention and presentation of argument. 



In the Freshman year a term's study is given to Khetoric. Students are 

 taught to write with correctness, as to punctuation, expression of thought, and 

 meclianical execution, by means of full instruction, daily exercises in criticism, 

 and weekly compositions. They are also taught to see the value of different 

 kinds of writings preparatory to the enjoyment of the works of English mas- 

 ters of prose and verse. 



In the Junior year a term of study is given to the study of higher llhetoric, 

 involving the nature of argument and of persuasion. 



Weekly exercises in compositions and declamations are required of all the 

 Freslimen and Sophomores, and original orations of tlic other classes. 



Tiie French language is taught tliree terms. The French and German Ian- 

 guages are now requisite to the thorough student of any of the sciences or arts. 

 It is part of the design of the course of instruction here to put students in the 

 way of a more complete knowledge than we can furnish them, enabling them 

 to become, if they so desire, specialists in some studies. The experimenter in 

 vegetable physiology, or in feeding stock, or in any other department of scien- 

 tific investigation, if he will not waste his time, must know what has been 

 done, or is doing, in France and Germany in the same line of study, and the 

 information he needs is not accessible to tlie mere English student. Both lan- 

 guages are desirable, but one course is not long enough, nor our number of 

 teachers large enough for both. The preference given to French in our course 

 is not due to its higlier value, but to the fact that German teachers can be 

 found by students almost anywliere, and to the furtlier fact that Frencli is a 



