No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AG^RICULTURE. 261 



girls of that age wlio would go into a laboratory and depend so much 

 on their own illustrations as did these boys and girls of the Water- 

 ford school. What would you and I have thought twenty-five years 

 ago, to go into that one room and see and do a thing like that? Why, 

 the boy going to an agricultural college fifteen or eighteen years 

 ago did not get as much practical instruction in agriculture as do 

 these boys and girls at Waterford High School today. It simply 

 shows us how education along these lines is going forward and how 

 we can lay hold of the matter, and impress on our teachers that that 

 is what we expect them to do in our rural schools. 



Some of the boys are studying grain crops; they visit the fields, 

 and there study the conditions, and then this is followed by a talk 

 by the teacher on whether clover or some other form of bacteria 

 is most important in the raising of farm crops, and you would have 

 been surprised at- the interest manifested by those boys, and their 

 familiarity with the reports of the Pennsylvania Experiment Station 

 and the Maryland Experiment Station, and the United States De- 

 partment Bulletins. They go to them for their information. Now, 

 they are studying types of ears of corn; they are taking into con- 

 sideration the filling out of the butts, the length and uniformity of 

 the ears, the number of rows, and so on, and whether the corn looks 

 healthy and well developed or whether it is deficient in vitality. 

 They acquire as much practical knowledge as could have been ac- 

 quired at any agricultural college a few years ago. 



Here you see a class studying the money value of the farm pro- 

 ducts; they are trying to find out whether you shall sell off your 

 clover hay which is worth $9 in fertilizer for every ten dollars you 

 sell, or eight when you sell wheat bran, or seven in ensilage. They 

 are not only teaching these boys and girls arithmetic, but they are 

 teaching them how to use their capital, in the shape of farm crops, 

 economically. 



Here are the boys and girls out with their pruning outfit. They 

 not only learn the theory of it, but they actually go out and prune 

 trees and watch them to see whether they will grow. They tried 

 to get a little land to turn into an orchard, but the price wanted 

 was to high. Then a public spirited citizen offered them the use of 

 about three and a half acres; half of it has trees on it, the other half 

 has not; he allows them to use it as they will, the only restriction 

 being that they cannot cut the trees down. Here you see a spray- 

 ing demonstration on a small tree. They are doing the work, and 

 asking the teacher for the theory of it. 



This picture was taken nearly two years ago, and shows the boys 

 studying the animals for the purpose of learning about live stock; 

 they go to see the actual animal, and learn in that way the difference 

 between the meat cow and the dairy cow. 



In the way of machinery, tin y buy what they can, and borrow 

 what they can; they have two gasoline engines, a manure spreader, 

 a corn harvester and two or three other implements. 



When I visited the school one day, they were studying horses, 

 and discussing the difference between the difi'erent breeds. It hap- 

 pened that there was a large Percheron stallion in the village, and 

 one of the boys asked the teacher if they could not arrange to go 

 down and &ee the animal. You will notice about twenty or thirty 



