oil REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE. 



easily included. Several States have already passed laws requiring 

 teachers to prepare themselves to give instruction in nature study and 

 agriculture, and exercises and illustrative material for such work are 

 being more frequently published, often with the aid of the teachers in 

 the agricultural colleges. 



Another closely allied movement at present manifest principally in 

 the citv schools is the school-garden movement — the introduction of 

 garden work with flowers and vegetables into the graded schools as a 

 weekly or semiweekly exercise. Wherever work of this kind has been 

 tried under proper supervision it has aroused considerable interest on 

 the part of the students, has furnished excellent material for nature- 

 study work, and has correlated well with the other studies in the curri- 

 culum. 



Farmers' Institutes. 



In ni}^ last annual report I recommended that an appropriation of 

 $5,000 be given to enable the Office of Experiment Stations to under- 

 take work connected with the promotion of the farmers' institute sys- 

 tem in this country. The appropriation was to be used in employing 

 an officer who would devote his time and energy to this work, visit 

 institute workers and advise them regarding the ways in which the 

 Department might help the institutes, study the problems of institute 

 management at home and abroad, and seek to shape the Department's 

 work for the institutes so that it might be most helpful to this enter- 

 prise. As the matter was finally fixed in the appropriation act, only 

 about $2,000 of the income of the Office of Experiment Stations for 

 the current fiscal year can be used for this purpose. This is entirely 

 inadequate for the work planned, but will be used in gathering statis- 

 tics of the institute movement and in employing, during a part of the 

 year, an officer who will be retained as farmers' institute specialist, if 

 Congress shall provide sufficient means for continuing the work. 



Farmers' institutes are now held in 4A States and Territories, includ- 

 ing Hawaii. Nearly complete returns from -10 States and Territories 

 show that in the areas reported about 2,300 institutes are held annuall}^; 

 that the funds expended by the different States and Territories in 

 support of these institutes (not including expenses incurred by local 

 authorities) amounted to about $196,000 per annum, and that about 

 709,000 people attended the institutes. The number of students taking 

 the agricultural course at the agricultural colleges in the same States 

 and Territories during the j^ear ended June 30, 1901, was 9,623, includ- 

 ing those who are recorded as attending courses in household econoni}^, 

 dairying, and veterinary science. 



The total number of persons reached by the farmers' institutes and 

 the agricultural colleges (about 720,000) is, however, only a small per- 

 centage (7.2 per cent) of those actually engaged in agricultural pur- 



