434 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



tage in equipment and buildings with the other departments of the 

 college or university. He held it to be "the plain and imperative 

 duty of all land-grant colleges to build up strong, independent depart- 

 ments of agriculture." Short courses should be provided for those 

 unable to take the longer courses. The speaker described what was 

 done in Michigan to arouse interest in the agricultural work b} 5 - main- 

 taining close relations with public schools, advertising the institution 

 in various ways, and running excursions to the college in August, 

 which the past year were attended by about eight thousand people. 



Dean Davenport, referring to the one-time idea that agriculture 

 could not be made interesting, suggested the need of more instructors 

 in the subject, and splitting it up into smaller subdivisions. He 

 showed, as a matter of statistics, that in different institutions the num- 

 ber of teachers in agriculture varies at present from 23 or 24 down to 

 two-thirds of a man, and stated that "so far as I know, in these insti- 

 tutions the interest in agriculture on the part of the students is about 

 in proportion to the number of men who are teaching the subject." 

 Referring to the University of Illinois, he stated that the institution 

 otters 73 different lines of instruction in agriculture, all technical, 67 

 of which are being taught this year; the present year its corps of 

 instructors is giving 44,360 hours of instruction. 



He made the point clear that the number of men to be taught should 

 not be the unit in manning the staff of the agricultural department, as 

 it now too often is, but that the true unit is the subject itself. He 

 pointed out that his institution now has more teachers in agriculture 

 than it had students tive years ago, when the contention was that more 

 teachers were not needed until there were more students to teach; but 

 he showed that as soon as the number of instructors was doubled the 

 number of students doubled, and he believed that within certain limits 

 it would be so everywhere. He held that it was in the universities 

 to-day that agriculture has the best opportunity, because its courses 

 are more elastic and more opportunities are given for electives; and 

 agriculture being a technical work, he argued, must be largely elective. 



Prof. C. F. Curtiss urged concentration in the agricultural courses, 

 rather than too narrow specialization; and other speakers pointed out 

 the distinction between training and education, maintaining that much 

 of the instruction given in agriculture was training simply, and did 

 not involve systematic and fundamental instruction over a broad field, 

 which is essential to education. 



While the question as to what the colleges should do to popularize 

 agricultural education was not detinitel} 7 answered, the discussion 

 served to clarify the ideas on this topic, to some extent, and to bring 

 out the varying conditions in different localities which called for special 

 treatment. 



In a paper on What Degrees should be Given for the Completion of 



