i6 Report of the Director. 



of the people. Jt is devolving largely on the agricultural Colleges 

 to revive and redirect the rural school in its agricultural relations. 

 One of the greatest obstacles to the progress of this effort is the 

 almost total lack of teachers who have neither any knowledge of the 

 needs of the people or any outlook to the work. There is great 

 danger that the ])resent interest in agricultural education may col- 

 lapse, as similar but smaller previous movements have collapsed, 

 unless a very active effort is made to train teachers for the work. 

 These teachers must be trained in agricultural colleges. At Cor- 

 nell, we already have the beginning for the training of such teachers 

 in our two-year nature-study course, and the rural school-house 

 and gardens that are now established as a part of our work. We 

 have taken ])art in the propaganda for better and more significant 

 rural schools. 1 would organize this proposed normal work by 

 adding at once two or three persons to our stafif to handle the 

 general subjects and to prosecute the large extension work that 

 should go with the enterprise ; and then arrange for the giving of 

 adaptable technical instruction in the various specific subjects by 

 the regular departments in the college. In this way we could 

 quickly organize and assemble a very strong department for the 

 training of persons to teach nature-study, elementary agriculture 

 and related subjects. Herein, it seems to me, lies the greatest 

 opportunity to serve the interests of the agricultural country. 



Farm Forestry. — The forests are important sources of wealth and 

 prosperity in New York State. There are great tracts of public 

 forests. Almost any farm of any size also has its forest. About 

 one-third of New York is in woodland. In the last census year. 

 New York led all the states in tlie Union in the value of farm 

 forest products. These forests are related also to maintenance of 

 streams, water ])ower, water su])plies, floods, fish and game, climate 

 and the general attractiveness of the country. No institution in the 

 State is teaching forestry. The State is greatly in need of an en- 

 lightened intelligence on these questions. They are primarily agri- 

 cultural (|uestions. The forest is a crop. This college of agricul- 

 ture is giving advice on many crojjs of much less importance than 

 the forest crop. I recommend that forestry work be established in 

 the College of Agriculture. We have some forest on the Univer- 

 sitv farm, with which to begin, as a laboratory. Land could be 

 purcliast-d in this part of the State on which to establish a com- 

 mercial forest. We should then be in a position to aid the State, 

 in case our services were desired, in tlu' State forests. In fact, I 

 anticipate that the State forests could be made, in a very important 

 sense, laboratories and trial grounds for such department, the work 



