734 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



receive consideration until many years later. The public school system 

 was still very crude, and high schools were rare outside the large 

 cities. But there was a prevalent idea that science was to be of great 

 value and wide application to the fundamental industry, and the plan 

 to provide special schools for teaching the sciences in these applica- 

 tions met with considerable approval. 



Accordingly, when the constitution of the State of Michigan was 

 adopted in L850, a clause was inserted requiring that "the legislature 

 shall provide for the establishment of an agricultural school for agri- 

 culture and the natural sciences connected therewith." In obedience 

 to this provision an act for the establishment of a State agricultural 

 college was adopted by the legislature in 1855 and approved February 

 12 of that year. A farm of nearly TOO acres, then in the woods and 

 lying 3^ miles east of Lansing, was purchased and buildings erected, 

 and on May 13, 1857, the college was formally opened for the recep- 

 tion of students. 



The year following the action of the Michigan legislature, the legis- 

 lature of Maryland incorporated the Maryland Agricultural College, 

 the corporation comprising about five hundred philanthropic persons 

 who subscribed stock and purchased a farm for the college near Wash- 

 ington; and the same year Hon. Marshall F. Wilder succeeded in 

 obtaining from the legislature of Massachusetts a charter of the trus- 

 tees of the Massachusetts School of Agriculture. 



Near the close of the following year (1857) Justin S. Morrill began 

 his efforts to secure from Congress a land grant for the endowment of 

 colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts, which resulted in 1862 in a 

 gift of over ten million acres of land to the several States for that 

 purpose. Thus the cause of agricultural education was launched. 



How slow the progress was from these early beginnings is well 

 known to all students of agricultural education. Without method or 

 precedent to guide them, with little idea of the classification of the 

 subject for pedagogic purposes, with little or no equipment for the 

 agricultural department except a farm, which was expected to be a 

 model and at the same time to demonstrate the practical ability of the 

 professor in charge to make a farm pay, and, above all, in advance of 

 the educational progress of the times, is it surprising that agricultural 

 instruction was not an entire success from the outset? 



The agricultural schools of Europe were not patterned after because 

 the conditions and needs in this country were so dissimilar. One 

 man's theory of what should be taught and how it should be imparted 

 was as good as another's, apparently, and there was no end of experi- 

 menting in these matters. There was found to be comparatively little 

 of agricultural science to teach at that time — much less in fact than 

 the founders had supposed; and so much stress was laid upon the 

 practical aspects of farming that the instructors were not always men 



