246 Our College^ Errors Respecting its Object and Aim. [June, 



edge useful. At great outlay, and to give additional interest to 

 this department, tlie directors liave erected a Hall containing rooms 

 for the accommodation of the teachers in this department, for class 

 and lecture rooms, cabinets, apparatus, libraries, etc. An operat- 

 ing Laboratory, first in the "West, if not in the Union, with all the 

 means and facilities for fifteen or twenty operators at a time — the 

 Students themselves preparing their own reagents, and performing 

 the various analyses under the direction of competent teachers and 

 text-books. Thus each student must become a manipulator. 



Our Farm, Gardens and Cabinets, will embrace all that the Chem- 

 ist, Botanist, Geologist and practical agriculturist require, fully to 

 illustrate and apply the principles evolved in the lecture room. In 

 the Botanic department we have already made extensive collections. 

 We have secured from our patent office the promise of all rare 

 seeds, cuttings, tubers, etc. We have in process of testing at this 

 time, some forty-six kinds of "wheat, a like number of grasses, 

 and numerous other varieties of seeds. We have already set over 

 two hundred kinds of pears, sixty kinds of cherries, several hun- 

 dred kinds of apples, numerous peach, plum, as well as numerous 

 varieties of smaller fruits. 



We have commenced cabinets of insects, birds, minerals and fos- 

 sils. We have secured one of the finest cabinets of shells in the 

 United States, embracing over five thousand species, and more than 

 fifteen thousand individuals. Our apparatus for analysis and illus- 

 tration is good, and is being daily improved. 



The microscope herein described, and just obtained from London, 

 is one of the finest made. It is the purpose of our directors to make 

 our department of science, in all respects, complete. And here an- 

 other error, we trust, will be corrected, in relation to our object, that 

 of proposing to resurrect and dignify into new importance the 

 defunct system of manual labor institutions. This has formed 

 no part of our plan. Views so unphilosophieal, and which have 

 fully proved themselves such in practice, have not been entertained, 

 but are regarded by our Board as Utopian. 



True, our department furnishes, to those who desire it, profitable 

 as well as instructive labor, and some have improved it, and will con- 

 tinue to improve it to their advantage. But this arrangement will be 

 indiscriminately for the benefit of those, who enter this department 

 or not, and will aid many industrious young men to educate them- 

 selves. It is to the young men of our country, well advanced in 



