204 EXPERIMENT STATION EECORD. 



in its scientific and productive aspects, it constitutes an almost ideal 

 introduction to high school science work. 



To specify more particularly, agricultural study calls for some 

 definite knowledge of geologj'^, physical and commercial geography, 

 botany, zoology, physiology, chemistry, history, manual training, 

 arithmetic, and bookkeeping. Practically all of these subjects are 

 now taught in the schools, but few if any of them, language-study 

 included, carry their own motive to the student's interest. Taught 

 mainly as distinct subjects, they are naturally considered as having 

 indifferent relations or none to each other, and the student fails to 

 perceive any clear unity of purpose or principle of valuation in his 

 school work. But the study of agriculture, in a natural, unforced 

 way, so draws upon all these subjects as to discover to the student 

 their educational values and inter-relations. The pupil who becomes 

 interested in agriculture as the great basic industry of the race finds 

 himself under the necessity of studying its included subjects as a 

 means of understanding the essence of agriculture itself. In the 

 words of President Buckham, ''Agriculture is not a simple science, 

 but a group of sciences, each of which is linked with all the others, so 

 that you can not know even a little of one without knowing some- 

 thing of others." " 



To illustrate this for the schoolroom: A lump of soil takes the 

 student at once to the fundamental earth-science, geolog}\ In its 

 present condition this soil is the result of weathering and decomposi- 

 tion — physical geography. It is composed of certain material ele- 

 ments each related to the others and with its fertility — chemistry. 

 Its fertility is evidenced by its ability to produce plants — botany. 

 Plants require water as the solvent and carrier of their food materials, 

 and this soil-water moves to the organs of the plant by gravity, 

 capillarity, and osmosis — physics. An important function of 

 economic plants is to serve as food for animals — zoology. The proc- 

 esses of food assimilation in plant and animal bodies bring us to 

 physiology. And the return of plant and animal residues to the 

 earth for another cycle of modifications brings us face to face with_ 

 the whole philosophj^ of natural law. Furthermore, the production, 

 transportation, and exchange of food supplies and the materials of 

 clothing and housing is the essence of history-making. It involves 

 the original necessity of language-study, manual training, mathe- 

 matics, and science itself. Civilization is thus seen to be the ultimate 

 and logical product of agriculture and its subsidiary arts and sciences. 



This is not an invented device of argument or artful presentation. 

 The sequence of relations embraced in agriculture as a central sub- 



<»An address to students of the winter course, University of Vermont, Janu- 

 ary 5, 1910, on Agriculture in the High School. 



