farmers' institutes in the united states. 341 



The State lecture force has on its roll the names of 70 persons, and 

 during the year about 400 other teachers, essapsts, and local speakers 

 assisted in giving instruction at the institute meetings. A two-weeks 

 normal institute was held, one week at the experiment station at 

 Geneva, and the next week at Cornell University. At this institute 

 the State lecturers were expected to be present. The sessions were 

 addressed by station and college men, each presenting and explaining 

 the progress of agricultural science in his specialty during the year. 

 Complete s^dlabuses of the lectures were printed and handed to the 

 members of the normal class and special periods were set aside for 

 their discussion. 



The results of this method of instructing the lecturers and securing 

 uniformity of statement in their teaching before institutes have been 

 most satisfactory. Twenty-two agricultural college and experiment 

 station men lectured before the institutes during the year, devoting in 

 the aggregate two hundred and thirty days of time to this work. There 

 were 120 sessions of boys' institutes held with excellent results. Each 

 year 15,000 copies of institute proceedings are published and dis- 

 tributed, 10,000 copies through members of the legislature and 5,000 

 through the department of agriculture. Three special topics were 

 made leading subjects in institute discussions for the year — rural 

 schools, good roads, and alfalfa. 



NORTH DAKOTA. 



Institute director. — E. E. Kaufman, superintendent of farmers' institutes, Fargo. 



Special seed trains were sent out in North Dakota this year, con- 

 tinuing on tl%e road in the aggregate twenty-two daj^s and making 

 one hundred and fifty stops. At each stop lectures were delivered 

 and specimens exhibited before audiences of farmers. Seventeen 

 thousand six hundred and ninety-six persons were at these meetings. 

 The stops were about tliree-quarters of an hour each, except that in 

 the evenings meetings for from about half past 6 to half past 9 o'clock 

 were held,- after which the train would leave for the next place sched- 

 uled for the first hour the next morning. The lecturers were con- 

 fined to one or two topics, illustrating them by specimens and in some 

 cases by demonstrations. One of these trains was utilized as an 

 "emergency special" to carry abroad, just before seeding, information 

 respecting the treatment of seed to prevent rust. The plan was to 

 cover as large a part of the wheat and flax growing districts as possible 

 in the shortest time, thus endeavoring to induce as large a number of 

 farmers as possible to treat their seed for the destruction of spores 

 before planting. 



The institute work in general was quite as successful as in previous 

 years. One hundred and sixty-two sessions were held and 20,310 

 persons reached. The average attendance at each session was 125. 



