360 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of agricultural educcatiou upon a farm, and in some respects more especially 

 in the working of compulsory manual labor, we liave been acknowledged to be 

 more successful than most other colleges, although the wisdom of requiring 

 manual labor is by no means generally conceded. 



It is a peculiarity of the educational history of Michigan that from the first 

 its laws recognize the dependence of agriculture upon science, and the conse- 

 quent claims of the art to a place in any full educational scheme. It is not 

 indeed, directly recognized in that oldest law, the quaint law of 1817, when 

 the governor and judges, in M'hom the administration of the Territory resided, 

 ordained the establishment of a catholepistemiad or university of Michigania. 

 Yet this was to have a didaxia of catholepistemia, or universal science. But 

 when the University of Michigan was established in 1837, and branches pro- 

 vided for in different parts of the State, not more than one to each county, it 

 was distinctly provided that "in each branch of the University there shall be 

 a department of agriculture, with competent instructors in the theory of agri- 

 culture, including vegetable physiology and agricultural chemistry, and exper- 

 imental and practical farming and agriculture." 



The first Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Rev. John D. Pierce, 

 appointed in 1836, to whose zeal and wisdom in the cause of education the 

 State owes so much, speaks in 1839 of establishing a department of agriculture 

 in one of the branches, as an object of great interest, and such establishment 

 in one branch was subsequently urged as required. The law may have been 

 amended to read one, instead of every branch. 



So, when the State Normal School was established in 1849 (dedicated Oct. 

 5, 1852), its object besides that of educating teachers is, in the language of 

 the law itself, " to give instruction in the mechanic arts, and in the art of 

 husbandry and agricultural chemistry." 



It was not very strange, therefore, although a very unusual thing, that 

 agricultural education should find, as it did in 1850, a recognition even in the 

 constitution of the State. 



STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Meanwhile a new influence in favor of agricultural education, wliich finally 

 took the form of a demand for a separate school of agriculture, for an Agri- 

 jCultural College came into being. This was the State Agricultural Society. 



In March, 1849, some sixty members of the Legislature, then in session, 

 issued a call for a meeting to organize a State Agricultural Society. The 

 Society, still in vigorous life, and a friend of the Agricultural College, was 

 incorporated by an act approved April 2d of the same year. John C. Holmes 

 was its first Secretary, an office which he held for several years. The Society 

 at once instituted annual fairs, and following good New England and New 

 York customs, spared time from exhibitions to listen to an annual address. 

 The address for the first fair (1849) was, strange to say for those days, a 

 farmer, the Hon. E. H. Lothrop, of Galesburg, a brother of the well known 

 G. V. N. Lothrop, of Detroit, and in his address so foreshadows the character 

 of our Agricultural College, that I am tempted to quote a few paragraphs. 



His language is: "I well remember when the question of the location of our 

 State University was pending before the Legislature, a proposition was made 

 that at least eighty acres of land should be secured at or near the place of its 

 location, and the reasons given were that the State might eventually wish to 

 establish a department of agriculture in the same, and for that purpose would 

 require that or a greater quantity of land, for the erection of an experimental 



