REPORT OF AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 417 



trustees of Amherst College kindly ofiered the use of their 

 extensive and valuable library to our students and faculty 

 on the same conditions as to their own. This generous offer 

 has been availed of quite freely, and its advantages highly 

 prized ; but there is an extensive line of works specially 

 needed, and adapted to the wants of the students of the 

 Agricultural College, which are not found there, and its dis- 

 tance is such as to make its use a great inconvenience. Some 

 means should be provided for making regular additions to 

 the college library, and a suitable room for its keeping ; and 

 the college will be far from having its necessary equipment 

 until this is done. We thus express our views of the wants 

 of the institution committed to our care, with the feeling that 

 it is doubtful if the general public, or even the Legislature, 

 fully appreciate the magnitude of the enterprise, or th.e skill, 

 intelligence, and means necessary to carry it forward success- 

 fully, or in a manner creditable to the State. As was 

 intended by its founders, the college is an educational insti- 

 tution, with its distinct departments, apparatus, cabinets, 

 and instructors, like other New-England colleges, but with 

 the addition of technical courses relating to the theory and 

 practice of agriculture, and other industrial arts, to make 

 which efficient and useful requires of its trustees the same 

 executive care and oversight in all details, the same financial 

 provisions, and the same responsibilities in kind and extent, 

 as are required of the trustees of other colleges. The farm 

 is a very large one, with its buildings, stock, tools, teams, 

 crops, and business operations of all kinds, like other large 

 farms, and, owing to the peculiar circumstances of its con- 

 nections and objects, requires more than ordinary care, fore- 

 sight, and responsibility. The horticultural department, 

 with its conservatories, nurseries, fruiteries, and landscape- 

 gardening areas, is a business operation of no small magni- 

 tude. Each of these divisions of the enterprise is indispen- 

 sable as a part of the general system of the institution ; and 

 each, from a business stand-point, is of sufficient size and 

 importance to monopolize the time and thought of an able 

 board of direction, the skill and energy of the best executive 

 talent ; and the whole and each is enlarged and complicated 

 by the necessity of making each contribute to the technical 

 education of the students. In addition to this, there is a 



