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MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOOIETY. 75 
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON CONDITION OF AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FARM. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen of Minnesota State Horticultural Soctety : 
The University. 
On the first day of July, 1875, the undersigned as a committee of this 
Society, paid an official visit to the State University and University Farm. 
We find the University to embrace a number of schools so planned and ar- 
ranged as to form a very compact University system and each school to be 
headed by enterprising and efficient professors. 
We had the pleasure of being conducted over the buildings by President 
Folwell and some of the professors. The library contains more than 10.000 
volmes and is continually receiving additions, and is so well arranged that 
any work called for can be found without delay. The museum contains a 
great variety of useful inventions, interesting specimens of mineralogy, 
&c., and is fast becoming a valuable feature of the Institution, and in the 
Agricultural department, under supervision of Prof. Lacy, a fine collection 
of seeds, grains, grasses and woods are being made. 
Agricultural Department. 
The buildings to be used for the Agricultural College were not entirely 
completed but would soon be ready for occupation and the use for which 
they are designed. This department is designed to give the students special 
training in the sciences pertaining to agriculture, including their practical 
application. Chemistry, botany, landscape gardening, horticulture, arbor- 
culture and entomology are among the studies to be pursued, and reduced 
to practice. A convenient glass structure has been erected for the propa- 
gation and growing of plants, flowers, &c. 
Farm. 
The farm is not very convenient to the University, not because too dis- 
tant but because of the quantity of loose sand that must be traveled over 
to reach it. No doubt the farm may be a good one for agricultural experi- 
ments, for when a student has become so well educated that he can make 
it produce paying crops he is safe to make a living at farming upon any 
part of the habited globe, but it does not strike us as being a favorable 
place for the successful pursuit of horticulture. The soil that is being used 
for horticultural purposes is mostly alight sand, and we were informed had 
been cropped for fourteen years without the use of fertilizers of any kind, 
and had become so impoverished that it would not produce good weeds. 
Garden. 
The garden department is under the supervision of W. T. Scott, and 
from the system, neatness and good cultivation that is seen on every hand, 
we are inclined to pronounce him to be the right man in the right place. 
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