75 



for at the university, through the efforts of the political economist, 

 Professor Hanssen, of Gottingen University. Tlie course was planned 

 to last four semesters and was placed under the immediate charge of 

 an agricultural faculty composed of four professors, among whom 

 were Wohler, the famous chemist, and Gripenkerl, who until his 

 death in 1900 tilled the chair of agriculture in the university. The 

 plan of study of the new^ course was comprehensive. Besides the 

 various fundamental natural sciences, it included agricultural chem- 

 istry, veterinary science, meteorology, agronomy, farm management, 

 forestry, political science, and rural law. The theoretical studies 

 were to be supplemented by agricultural excursions to estates in the 

 vicinity of Gottingen; special arrangements were made by which the 

 large Government estate, Weende (an old monastery farm, situated 

 a))out a mile north of Gottingen), could 1)e v.isited at any time for 

 instructional purposes, and agricultural experiments could also be 

 made on the land belonging to the estate. 



The new course started under favorable auspices and received an 

 impetus through the establishment of the Weende Experiment Station 

 in 1857 by the Royal Agricultural Society of Hanover. One o])ject 

 in establishing the experiment station was to supplement the agricul- 

 tural instruction at the university by demonstrations, "just as if it 

 were an organic part of the same.'' In 1857 the official name of the 

 course Avas changed to the Royal Agricultural Academy of Gottingen- 

 Weende, so as to give definite expression to the close connection 

 between the theoretical instruction offered at the university and the 

 practical work at the model Government farm, Weende. The attend- 

 ance at the acadeni}' gradually increased from only four students in 

 1851 to over forty in the beginning of the sixties. About this time 

 the number of students that came to receive agricultural instruction 

 began to grow smaller, and there was a stead}^ decrease during the fol- 

 lowing years, until in 1871-72 scarcely more than a dozen attended the 

 academy. The cause of the decreasing attendance during the last 

 years of this period was not difficult to understand in view of the fact 

 that the Agricultural Institute of Halle University, which was estab- 

 lished in 1863, showed a steadily increasing attendance during the 

 same time. The Nestor among agricultural universitv teachers, Julius 

 Kubn, through whose efforts the Halle Agricultural Institute was 

 established, and to whom more than any other man is due the credit 

 foi the splendid growth of agricultural university instruction, l)oth in 

 German}^ and in other countries, was the first one to call attention to 

 the fact that an agricultural educational institution that is nothing but 

 a professional school does not supply the facilities for instruction 

 which the times demand. Agricultural science is not merely an aggre- 

 gation of applied sciences, it has its own special sphere, and in order 

 to live and develop it must have opportunities for verification of prac- 



