REPORT OF PRESIDENT WILLITS. 27 



'The course at the Naval Academy is so nearly, in many of its features, like 

 that of our mechanical course, as I found when I visited the institution two 

 years ago, that Prof. Durand will come to us with the skill and acquirements 

 necessary to build up the department. Moreover, he conies to us after three 

 years' detail under United States statute to mechanical institutions, and comes 

 directly from Worcester Institute, one of the most renowned in the country. 

 He has therefore had the experience in teaching which is essential to success 

 as an instructor. 



THE APPEOPKIATIONS. 



The Legislature gave us $10,000 for a new dormitory for about sixty stu- 

 dents, and $10,000 for an apartment building or buildings for the assistant 

 professors and instructors and their families, and for the military instructor 

 and the Signal Service officer. As the present dormitories are to a consider- 

 able extent occupied by these instructors, the rooms vacated by them, with the 

 new dormitory, will enable us to accommodate from seventy-five to one 

 hundred more students, so that we can catalogue four hundred. From 

 present appearances both buildings will be fully occupied as soon as con- 

 structed. We were given $5,000 for a horticultural laboratory, which will 

 enable us to construct one of the finest and best appointed in the United 

 States. This will place that department on a basis commensurate with the 

 standing of this college, and with the importance of fruit culture in this 

 State. We were given $3,000 for an extension of the shops, and $1,500 for 

 two new boilers, both rendered necessary to fully equip the Mechanical 

 department. This will enable us, by giving us shop room, systematically to 

 assign for stated periods when other work cannot be done, the students in the 

 agricultural course to shop work, a demand that I referred to in my last 

 report. This will fill out the time of required manual labor which is the 



• distinguishing feature of this college, by utilizing in the shop the seasons of 

 the year when work cannot be done on the farm or garden or grounds. 



Thus it will be seen that in the last four years there have been placed on 

 an independent basis the Veterinary, Mechanical, Military and Horticultural 

 departments, all with their laboratories, shops and drill hall; and this 

 completes the round of development necessary to equip all the departments 

 required by the land grant act of 1862. I need only to add that the college 

 now stands in its equipment and morale, without a superior of its kind in the 

 United States, recognized as such at home and abroad. 



But institutions should never stand still ; like individuals, when they cease 

 to grow there soon appear elements of decay. With added years come netv 



• demands, and to keep abreast of the age every college must be alive to the 

 new want. When first founded agricultural colleges were essentially educa- 

 tional. The land grant of 1862 was primarily for educational purposes. The 

 importance of experimental work was but incidentally recognized. As years 

 passed the importance of this work became more apparent, and efforts in 

 that line were made, but being subject to the leading purpose of the 

 college, the educational, the efforts were sporadic and unsatisfactory. It was 

 found, moreover, that experiments were costly, and the funds could not be 

 spared from the current expenses of the college already stocked for educa- 

 tional work. Eecognizing these facts, it was determined to appeal to Congress 

 to supplement the endowment of 1862, whose leading purpose, as before 

 stated, was instruction, by an annual appropriation of $15,000 for each col- 



