CONVENTION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 263 



Prf>f. J, L. Hills, of Venuout, considered the scope of tlie short course 

 a matter to be deteriniiied by local conditions. He believed there was 

 a danger tbat the short course would divert young' nien from the regu- 

 lar 4 years' course. The ideal short course he considered to be one 

 made up of studies taken out of the curriculum of the long course. In 

 Vermont tlie only successful short couise had been that in dairying. 



Prof. C. S. Phunb, of Indiana, stated that at Purdue University all 

 of the dairy instruction had been cut out from the regular course of 4 

 years and put into a special course. At this institution there are 5 

 lines of agricultural instruction from which the student may choose. 



Prof. Hunt, of Ohio, believed that the sbort course should be con- 

 cerned with a special subject. At the Ohio University the short (course 

 in agriculture occupies 2 years. The first year of this (course contains 

 no technical industrial study unless agricultural chemistry should be 

 so considered, and tlie studies of this year prei)are the student, with 

 unimportant exceptions, for entrance to the freshman class in the 4 

 years' course. In the second year of the special course the student 

 gets a considerable portion of the technical industrial studies of the 

 regular 4 years' course. 



Prof. Hays, of Minnesota, emphasized the need of special courses as 

 a means of attracting students, and mentioned as examples tlie popu- 

 larity of instru( tion in the slaughtering of animals at the Minnesota 

 School of Agriculture and of the agricultural course for girls at the 

 same institution. 



Another subject on the programme was cooperation between the 

 experiment stations, but tliis was widened to include cooperative field 

 experiments by farmers. Mr. Woods, who opened the discussion, con- 

 sidered cooperative field exi)eriments with farmers as of value chiefly 

 from an educational point of view and not as furnishing safe data for 

 scientific deductions. 



Prof. Morrow, of Illinois, spoke of the advantage of .stations consult- 

 ing each other as to minor details of parallel experiments, in order that 

 the results of their work might be comparable. 



Director Smith, of Michigan, spoke of the advisability of station 

 workers everywhere being supplied with diagrams of station farms on 

 which experiments were conducted and with data as to the character 

 of the soil, amount of rainfall, etc. 



Dr. Frear sjjoke of the need of cooperation among stations in inves- 

 tigations to determine the effect of climate on plants. Mr. Mills, of 

 Ontario, explained hov/ in his province satisfactory results had been 

 secured in cooperative experiments with about 2,000 farmers, most of 

 them ex-students of the agricultural college. 



Director Henry, of Wisconsin, believed that sooner or later the sta- 

 tions would be driven to a certain amount of cooperation by affinity of 

 interest. It was urged by others that cooperative experiments in feed- 

 ing animals were impracticable. 



