268 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



I know that in point of excellence the agricultural department of the 

 University of Minnesota is ranked higher than any other department 

 of our university. I have visited the principal agricultural schools 

 and colleges in this country, and I know they have to work hard 

 to get students, and comparatively few of them go back onto the 

 farms. We do not have to work hard for this, for our system edu- 

 cates that way. I have visited also most of the principal European 

 agricultural schools and colleges, and I do not know of one that I 

 would rank higher than ours, or one that I would rather belong to 

 than to the faculty of the Minnesota agricultural school. Minne- 

 sota is good enough for me. 



"The first faculty consisted of Professors Porter, Hays, Sprague 

 and Harper and Dr. Lugger and myself. There have been a few 

 changes and only one death here, which we have recently experienced 

 in the great and untimely loss of our friend, Dr. Otto Lugger. 

 These men with others who have joined with them have made this 

 school a splendid success. They came here for their life work, and 

 they recognize that their lives are not going to be long enough to 

 make this work as great a success as it should be. They feel that 

 the work is immortal but the workers are very mortal. 



"People come here and see our fine buildings, the dairy building, 

 the horticultural building, the armory, the girls' building and others, 

 and our fine grounds, and they say nature has done much for us — but 

 we have done something to help nature. We have tried to imitate 

 nature as she appears at her best, and this natural appearance of our 

 campus is the result of a great amount of work and care. At first 

 there was no highway or graded road where is our present entrance. 

 We came across the fields to reach the institution. So our buildings 

 have increased in number, (and we are soon to have additional 

 ones) and our grounds have grown in beauty, and the work of the 

 experiment station has grown in greater proportion ; and our school 

 has surpassed all that was thought possible, until we are looked upon 

 throughout the northwest as having an ideal institution ; that is, the 

 stone that was rejected of the builders has become the head of the 

 corner. 



"Last winter the legislature made an appropriation of $2,000 

 a year for the purpose of sending agricultural literature from the 

 school of agriculture to the rural schools. The idea is to give a 

 start in rural education in agriculture. Short bulletins on subjects 

 of special interest will be prepared and sent to all the district schools. 

 This is a movement that will result in great good, for it is of no use 

 for the legislature to pass a law requiring the teachers to teach some- 

 thing of horticulture or agriculture in the public schools when they 

 do not know anything about these subjects themselves, much less 

 how to teach them. I believe great good will come from these 

 pamphlets sent out, so that the teachers will know what and how to 

 teach horticultural or agricultural topics. When the work is better 

 known there will come to be a demand for it, and it will become an 

 important qualification in teachers." 



Prof. Snyder, of the department of chemistry, was next called 

 upon and read an able and practical paper on "Plant Foods for 



