416 Our Farm Department. [September, 



plants and slirubs, foreign and domestic, that will grow in this 

 climate. 



And, at the earliest practicable period, it ip the purpose of the di- 

 rectors to erect a large conservatory, and green-houses, that the exotics 

 may also be represented. 



These grounds will be ornamented with various other improvements; 

 such as an apiary, vinery, rosary, grotto, lakelet, etc., to render them 

 interesting and attractive. The fruit department, grain department, 

 grass department, and vegetable department, are likewise receiving 

 appropriate attention. 



Arrangement has been made with the Patent Office to secure the 

 great variety of fruit, grains, grasses, seeds, bulbs and cuttings, which 

 this department, at great expense, is making effort to obtain from our 

 own and other countries. For example, we shall have over twenty 

 kinds of wheat, upon which to experiment the coming autumn. 



A small nursery is attached to the department, to give instructions 

 in grafting, budding, pruning, etc. 



These grounds, embracing one hundred acres, are now surrounded 

 f7ith an osage orange hedge, planted last spring, protected by a good 

 mbstantial fence, four feet distant from the hedge. The botanic 

 ground, is paled with a fence eight feet high. Here, on these grounds, 

 it is the purpose to pursue our philosophical investigations beyond the 

 laboratory, and lecture-room, in the field and garden. 



Botany will not be studied as ordinarily from the dry herbarium, 

 or from an occasional culled flower or plant, ending with fixing its 

 order, genus, and species. But here, in addition to all this, the habits 

 of the plant, soil in which it will best flourish, how improved, how 

 best cultivated. Its medicinal or other properties, etc., etc., will be 

 investigated. The science of agriculture in all its details will here 

 also be taught, and all that pertains to its successful prosecution, both 

 in theory and practice, will receive attention. 



And one of the leading designs of this department will be to unite 

 science and practice, hitherto divorced, as well as to gather from the 

 broad fields of agriculture the numerous scattered facts, of immense 

 utility if collated, but now useless, and, often worse, tending to mislead 

 the ignorant. We hope at length by this arrangement to awaken in 

 the minds of our agricultural population a higher estimate of educa- 

 tion, and, if possible, elevate the standard of attainment whirh they 

 now deem sufficient, successfully to prosecute their own noble calling. 

 By elevating the standard here, we elevate it every where, socially, 

 intellectually, and morally. By improving the taste of the farming 



