THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



two, one in Florida and one in California. 

 For the support of the State and territorial 

 stations, Congress has made an appropria- 

 tion for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 

 1895, of $745,000 and for the Department 

 stations $10,000, in all $755,000. The 

 agricultural colleges in the States and 

 territories have also been endowed by 

 grants of public land proportionate in 

 extent to the numbers of Senators and 

 representatives in Congress. The annual 

 money value of these grants varies with 

 their extent and wisdom with which they 

 have been invested, but the total sum is 

 approximately a million and a half dol- 

 lars. In addition to this a sum of money 

 is granted annually to each agricultural 

 college directly from the treasury, and 

 this sum is to be increased at the rate of 

 $1,000 per annum until it amounts for 

 each institution to $25,000 a year. This 

 amount will be reached in five years. At 

 present the total sum so granted is nearly 

 a million dollars, and it will soon be a 

 million and a quarter. The total amount 

 of the financial aid thus granted directly 

 from the treasury to the agricultural 

 colleges and experiment stations is at the 

 present time approximately three million 

 and a quarter dollars annually. To this 

 must be added the amount given directly 

 by the States and arising from private 

 endowments — a sum of no inconsiderable 

 importance. In all it may be said that 

 about four million dollars in this country 

 are annually devoted to the promotion of 

 agricultural and allied education and re- 

 search, a sum more liberal than that de- 

 voted by any other country to similar 

 objects. 



The natural result from such investi- 

 gations is an increase in soil productive- 

 ness, the reclamation of lands supposed 

 heretofore to be unfit for tilage and a 

 greater economy of food production. The 

 supply of human food, therefore, appears 

 to more than keep step with the increase 



in population and food consumption. In 

 so far as economic reasons extend, there 

 is no occasion to look outside of scientific 

 agriculture for the supply of human food. 

 But another view is presented of the 

 subject of a more strictly scientific aspect, 

 based on the remarkable progress which 

 has been made in the past few years in 

 the domain of synthetic chemistry. The 

 year 1828 marks a new era in the history 

 of chemistry. It was in this year that 

 Wohler succeded in making synthetic 

 urea by the union of cyanic acid and 

 ammonia. Urea is not of a high order 

 of organic bodies; in fact, it is a result 

 of retrograde action in the ving 

 organism and the consequent result 

 of the breaking down of higher organic 

 bodies ; yet its artificial formation was 

 a brilliant victory of chemical methods, 

 a bold and successful charge on the 

 breast works of organic compounds. 

 To change the figure, it was the 

 crossing of the dead line which had 

 been drawn previously between the liv- 

 ing cell and the inanimate crucible. The 

 line once having been crossed, the old 

 distinctions between the organic and the 

 inorganic world have been completely 

 obliterated. With them have gone also 

 the divisions which were supposed to 

 separate the animal from the plant. It 

 is now known that animals do not get 

 their entire nourishment from so-called 

 organic nor plants from inorganic com- 

 pounds. Many plants, espicially those of 

 free of chlorophyl, live alone on organic 

 compounds. Especially noteworthy 

 among these, from the character of the 

 chemical activity which they manifest, 

 are the vegetations of a bacterial nature, 

 living largely on organic products. Even 

 the green plants first fabricate the inor- 

 ganic elements into organic compounds 

 before taking them into their tissues. 

 The green cells are the tiny kitchens in 

 which the meals of the plant molecules 

 are prepared. 



