FAEMERS' INSTITUTES IN THE UNITED STATES. 335 



or at the rate of $11.51 per session. A feature which gave great sat- 

 isfaction, and which it is proposed to greatly extend next year, was 

 the field meeting. These meetings were held, as the name indicates, 

 out in the fields, the lecturers using the growing crops for demonstra- 

 tion purposes. Great interest was awakened among the farmers by 

 this method of instruction, as is evidenced bv the fact that one meet- 

 ing was attended by upward of 1 ,000 persons. 



A better farm special railroad train was run over the Boston and 

 Maine system, reaching about 6,000 people. It made twenty-five 

 stops in Massachusetts, and at each stop lectures were delivered and 

 exhibits inspected. In j\fassachusetts all of the tim.e of the institute 

 is given to the State lecturers. This year there were 1 3 on the instruc- 

 tion force, all of whom were from the agricultural college and the 

 experiment station. 



MICHIGAN. 



Institute director.— L. R. Taft, superintendent farmers' institutes, Agricultural 

 College. 



The institutes of Michigan for the year ended June 30, 1906, sur- 

 passed those of the previous year in the number of sessions held by 

 107 and in the number of institutes by 65. The attendance was 

 122,573, being an average of 128 persons per session. There w^ere 

 also a number of institute picnics held and special trains run. The 

 trains ran for nine days, making forty-nine stops and reaching about 

 5,000 people. In the general institutes 51 sessions of these meetings 

 were women's sessions — a feature of Michigan institutes rapidly devel- 

 oping. The appropriation for institute work was $7,500 by the State 

 board and an equal amount additional for local expenses. Thirteen 

 members of the facult}^ of the agricultural college and of the experi- 

 ment station gave one hundred days of time to lecturing in the 

 institutes. Meetings were held during the year in all of the counties 

 excepting ten. The number of one-day institutes was 259, the larg- 

 est number of one-day institutes held in any State. 



A meeting of the institute lecturers, continuing for a w^eek, was 

 held at the agricultural college. The purpose was to bring the instruc- 

 tion force in touch with the college and experiment station work and 

 to give them, through lectures and demonstrations, the latest infor- 

 mation and discoveries in agricultural science. These meetings were 

 well attended, and the interest manifested in the course of instruc- 

 tion was all that could have been deshed. 



Reports containing statistics of attendance, lists of officers, and 

 the proceedings of the annual meeting, together with such papers of 

 excellence as had been read at the county institutes, were edited by 

 the State superintendent and 9.000 copies published and distributed. 



