OHAPTEB XLVII. 

 AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE EDUCATION. 



ITS SCOPE AND AIM. 



It is a fair presumption that Agricultural Schools were 

 intended to benefit the present as well as the future farmer. 

 To secure either of these ends, constant series of experi 

 ments must be carried on. The professors, also, should be 

 men of more than ordinarily broad and comprehensive 

 minds and acute faculties, for the reason that they have not 

 simply one science to deal with, but many. It is their prov 

 ince to investigate as well as to teach. They should be 

 working professors, who in the field can elucidate what 

 they have taught in the halls or laboratory. If this com 

 bination of faculties can not always be found, then the 

 working professors must take the students just where the 

 theoretical one left them; and this, day by day. The farm 

 is the laboratory where problems propounded in the halls 

 must be worked out. The soil is nature s great laboratory 

 where the elements are formed into grass, timber, grain, 

 vegetables, fruits, fibers, and flowers. So also the ani 

 mals of the farm are laboratories for the conversion of 

 grass, grain, vegetables, etc., into flesh for the sustenance 

 of man. 



Agriculture consists primarily of chemical changes and 

 transformations which result in elaborating from the ele- 

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