402 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.35 



the Massachusetts Agricultural College, as assistant dean and Mr. 

 E. H. Forbush of the college as registrar. 



At its public opening exercises the school was welcomed to the 

 Massachusetts Agricultural College by President K. L. Butterfield, 

 and the Granges of New England were represented by Rev. J. H. 

 Hoyt. Director H. P. Armsby, of Pennsylvania, as chairman of the 

 association's committee on graduate study, presided at this meeting 

 and spoke on the development of graduate study in agriculture in the 

 United States. He gave recently collected statistics showing that 

 about one thousand graduate students preparing for work along 

 agricultural lines were enrolled in the land-grant universities and 

 colleges during the past academic year. Dean True, of the Graduate 

 School, outlined briefly the objects for which the school was estab- 

 lished, the reasons for the particular courses of instruction offered 

 at the seventh session, and the intellectual and social advantages to 

 be derived from the contact of instructors and students in such a 

 school. 



Dr. True pointed out that in our time " education and research 

 more and more involve the harmonious working together of groups 

 of individuals who are willing to put away selfish ends for the com- 

 mon good. In a vast country like our own with a population drawn 

 from all quarters of the globe, and with an almost infinite variety 

 of environmental conditions, associations of scholars and investiga- 

 tors from many different regions, whether their work deals with sub- 

 jects remote from practical affairs, or as in the case of most of us 

 with matters of vital concern to great industries, is of gi'eat impor- 

 tance as an aid to that mutual understanding on which the life of our 

 nation and the perfecting of our civilization depend. For after all, 

 as recent events in the world's history have shown, public opinion 

 and governmental action depend, more largely than is generally rec- 

 ognized, on the modes of thought which are developed in the insti- 

 tutions of higher learning. 



" Such an organization as this Graduate School, having behind it 

 the associated universities and colleges represented in the Association 

 of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, may 

 also be influential in shaping the ideals and standards of agricultural 

 scholarship and research. If through our discussions here we are 

 able to carry back to our respective institutions suggestions for the 

 improvement of courses of instruction and methods of research and to 

 stimulate faculties and students to more thorough work, we shall 

 have made a valuable contribution to those influences which are to 

 determine the success of the great movement to raise American agri- 

 culture and country life to the highest possible level. 



