DEPARTMENT OF RURAL ART. 



The course in Rural Art has now proved its vahie in the college 

 curriculum, not only by the number of students desirous of registering 

 in the work it offers, and the apparent good the course seems to have 

 done for those who have elected it, but by the constantly increasing 

 interest in the out-of-door life generally. The value of the course in 

 helping to bring before the people, particularly of the rural districts, a 

 better understanding of the possible beauty of their home surroundings, 

 has elected it for a use which will become known more and more as the 

 work of the course advances. 



There have been many difficulties experienced in the formation of the 

 course, but the present year sees it, in every way, better equipped and 

 able to place before the student the full value and meaning of rural art, 

 or make of him a well-trained landscape designer. Future changes should 

 be in the detail of the course, rather than in its general outline or policy. 



The greatest inconvenience so far has been the coming for instruction 

 of students who were not entirely prepared for this work, lacking many 

 of the prerequisites, — generally juniors, or seniors, with but one or two 

 years to give to the work. The course, too, is as yet hardly sufficiently 

 well known for students to enter the college with a recognized purpose 

 of electing the work. They generally learn of its merits after a year 

 or two of residence, spent in preparing themselves for some other branch 

 of agriculture having other prerequisites. 



As a means of clearing the course of fhis and some other minor diffi- 

 culties, a committee has been appointed by the director of the college to 

 look over the course, primarily with regard to its detail arrangement, 

 with the purpose of bringing about a better relation between it and the 

 other departments of the college and the university. To aid the com- 

 mittee in its work, the writer has drawn up a four years' schedule of the 

 course. 



In addition to this feature of the committee's work, some minor changes 

 have been suggested for immediate consideration. We mention here 

 only the change suggested relative to Course 86, treating of the Organog- 

 raphy of plant Material of Landscape Gardening. This course, as now 

 given, allows the student to enter with only a botanical knowledge of 

 plant materials, and it remains for the course to teach him, not only the 



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