50 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Another partial solution is to require the students to grow crops and 

 make experiments in the greenhouses, throughout the college year. I 

 would have every horticultural student assigned a strip of greenhouse 

 bench or bed on which he will be expected to grow certain crops and 

 make certain experiments throughout the last two years of his course. 

 We need, for example, a greenhouse which is merely a piece of land 

 covered over with a glass roof, in which a vegetable garden can be made 

 in winter, and an orchard laid out and planted. In other words, we 

 now need greenhouses as laboratories for the horticultural course as a 

 whole, not merely for the particular subject of floriculture; and this 

 need far outweighs their usefulness as conservatories, which was their 

 chief function in earlier years. Other agricultural colleges are ex- 

 periencing the same diflSculty and some of them are solving it in the 

 manner that I shall now recommend. 



This point of view concerning the usefulness of greenhouses to the 

 college points to but one conclusion : that there should be a separation of 

 greenhouses, some being used for cpnservatories and crop culture pur- 

 poses, and some for student laboratories. It would be desirable if ex- 

 pedient, to retain the present greenhouses for the former purpose and 

 to build new ones near the horticultural laboratory for student use and 

 for experiments. At the present time no addition to the equipment of 

 the department would increase its efficiency more than the erection of 

 student greenhouse laboratories. * 



Changes, Additions and Infiprovements. — The remainder of the south 

 block of apples has been thinned, so that the trees stand two rods apart 

 and about fifty trees in this block have been top-worked. The middle 

 block of apples will be thinned. A small commercial plum and cherry 

 orchard, two varieties of each, has been planted, also a small commercial 

 field of raspberries and blackberries. A commercial vine3'ard, and a 

 commercial pear orchard will be planted next spring. The general plan 

 is to have a small commercial planting of each fruit, including only two 

 or three standard varieties. At present we have but one to three trees 

 or plants each of a great many varieties, most of which are, of course, 

 unsuitable here. We shall restrict but not eliminate the testing of 

 varieties; and add small commercial plantings of each fruit. The same 

 plan is followed with vegetables. 



By special appropriation of the board the main campus drive was 

 macadamized last fall, from the chemical laboratory to Howard Terrace. 

 The board should adopt the general policy of putting in a small piece of 

 macadam road each year, until all the main drives are improved. Follow- 

 ing the suggestions of Mr. O. C. Simonds, the landscape gardener em- 

 ployed by the board, several drives have been sodded down, and the main 

 drive brought in front of the Women's building, thus leaving no roads 

 across the centre of the campus. The board has approved this plan and 

 expressed the wish that no building be placed inside the main drive, 

 except, possibly, where College Hall now stands; and that this area re- 

 main for all time as the campus, unviolated by buildings. 



During the year we have lost Mr, C. A. McCue, instructor in horti- 

 culture, who was called to be professor of horticulture and horticulturist 

 of the experiment station in the Delaware College, a position which his 

 excellent work here has qualified him to fill. Instructor A. R. Kohler 

 goes to the Minnesota Agricultural College with a record for efficient 



