58 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



And in this making of men and women the courses at an agricultural 

 college seem peculiarly fortunate. 



THE TRAINING. 



Toward this indirectly tends all the training he receives. The con- 

 stant companionship with out-door nature, the great rewards she offers 

 to obedience to law and the inexorable and terrible punishments she 

 metes out to disobedience, the training of the mind through science to an 

 impartial analysis of facts, the beauty and quiet charm of rural life and 

 pursuits_far from the mad ambitions, the glitter and tinsel, the crime and 

 suffering of life's more crowded thoroughfares; the direction of 

 physical energy along lines of useful and interesting work — these 

 combined with the "blessed companionship of wise thoughts and 

 right feelings," the high ideals and noble characters that live in our liter- 

 ature, the study of our political and social problems and duties, the train- 

 ing in justice of induction and deduction, in clearness and accuracy of 

 expression, all tend to develop self -poise, self-dependence, manliness, a 

 high plane of thought and action. And whatever may be though of our 

 own Agricultural College, in this respect at least it may well invite com- 

 parison with any and all other colleges. Its list of graduates is an honor- 

 roll of earnest, successful men, doing doughty service for the State and 

 for society; and honored, wherever they are known, for sturdy manhood 

 and sterling integrity. The College has been singularly successful in 

 cultivating manhood and womanhood, ability to cope successfully with 

 the world, to win its prizes and obtain its rewards without forsaking 

 pure ideals or blotting the escutcheon of honor and character. 



The second and distinctive feature of an agricultural college educa- 

 tion is the technical one, and to this there are two parts, the training of 

 the brain to know, to recognize, to draw conclusions in accord with gen- 

 eral principles; and the training of the eye surely and trustworthily to 

 observe, and the hand with ease, skill and precision to execute the man- 

 dates of the will. 



SCIENCE THE BASIS. 



There is only one true and solid basis for the farmers' technical head- 

 training, and that basis is science. The farmers' implements, the 

 machines in his factory, are soils, moisture, plants, animals; and his 

 motive power is nature's forces of heat, light, electricity, surface tension, 

 gravitation, chemical afiSnity and the subtle entity we call life. Now all 

 that we know of these materials and forces constitutes science, and hence 

 if the farmer would know his tools thoroughly he must know science. 

 He stands in the first and closest contact with nature, and the more fully 

 he can know her secrets, her forces and their lines of action, the more 

 surely and the more economically can he produce his out-put, the more 

 fully is he nature's master and not her slave. Shakespeare's story of 

 Prospero, the magic wand, and its mastery over Ariel and Caliban, is 

 but an adumbration of the 20th century farmer, who with the magic 

 wand of science has mastered the subtile forces of air and earth. Now 



