252 DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS. 



ing such widely-separated regions as Maine, Oregon, California, New 

 Mexico, and Alabama. There was one student from Canada and one 

 from Argentina. There was also one woman, and the colored race 

 was represented by teachers from the Tuskegee Institute and the agri- 

 cultural college at Greensboro, N. C. Twenty-seven of the students 

 are professors or assistant professors of agriculture in agricultural 

 colleges, 31 are assistants in the agricultural colleges and experiment 

 stations, 9 are recent college graduates, and 8 are engaged in farming. 



Considering the character of the faculty and students, it goes with- 

 out saying that the whole period of the session was occupied with the 

 most earnest and profitable work. Without doubt, the influence of 

 this school will be felt throughout the country in the improvement of 

 courses of instruction in agriculture and the streugtheniiig of the 

 lines and methods of investigation of agricultural subjects. In other 

 ways the school will exert a beneficial influence. So rapid has been 

 the accumulation of materials for a real science of agriculture during 

 the past few years that even professional students of agriculture have 

 not realized how large a mass of knowledge is already available foi- 

 molding into a systematic body of truth which may be utilized for 

 pedagogic purposes, as well as for inductions of scientific and practical 

 value. The summaries given by the experts gatliered at this graduate 

 school have emphasized this fact and shown in a striking manner that 

 agricultural education and research may now be properly and efficiently 

 organized with reference to the science of agriculture itself, rather 

 than be, as heretofore, very largely a matter of the sciences related 

 to agriculture. This will serve to stimulate greatly the movement 

 alread}^ begun for the reduction of the materials of agricultural science 

 to "pedagogic form" for use in colleges and secondary schools, and 

 for the reorganization of agricultural institutions of research on the 

 basis of the divisions and subdivisions of agriculture, instead of 

 physics, chemistry, botany, and other primary and secondary sciences. 

 The day will thus be hastened when the science of agriculture will 

 rank with such tertiary sciences as geology, geography, and medicine 

 as one of the great systems of knowledge of direct benefit to mankind. 



We are, without doubt, in this country just on the edge of a great 

 popular movement for the improvement of the conditions of rural life 

 through the improvement of the rural schools. As one phase of this 

 movement, there will come the broadening of the instruction in the 

 principles of agriculture, so that in addition to college courses we shall 

 have secondary courses in ordinary and special high schools and even 

 some elementar}^ instruction in the common schools. In establishing 

 the lines and methods of secondary and elementary instruction in 

 agriculture so that it may be useful and attractive to the masses of 

 our rural youth, the leaders in agricultural science gathered in the 

 Graduate School of Agriculture Ihis summer will plaj^ an important 

 part, and it is believed that they have gone out from this school with 

 much inspiration to renewed efforts in this direction. For both the 

 thorough establishment of the science of agricultui-e and the wide 

 popularization of this science, the new school will, it is believed, be an 

 efficient agency. 



It is to be hoped, therefore, either that some other university will 

 open its doors for a second session of the school another year, or that 

 the Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations will 

 assume this burden, or that through the cooperation of the associa- 

 tion with universities and the Department of Agriculture the Gradu- 

 ate School of Agriculture may become a X3ermauent institution. 



