190 CHAPTERS IN RURAL PROGRESS 



A most suggestive phase of agricultural edu- 

 cation is college extension work. University 

 extension has had a rather meteoric career in 

 this country, in so far as it has been connected 

 with educational institutions; although the 

 extension idea is spreading rapidly and is being 

 worked out through home study and correspond- 

 ence courses of all sorts. But I think there is 

 scarcely any field in which the real college ex- 

 tension idea is today being more successfully 

 applied than in agriculture. The work started 

 with farmers' institutes, which were instituted 

 about twenty-five years ago and which have been 

 adopted in practically all the states of the Union. 

 It has broadened within ten years, until now it 

 is carried on not only by farmers ' institutes, but 

 through home-correspondence courses, the intro- 

 duction of millions of pamphlets into farm homes, 

 demonstrations in spraying, butter-making, soil 

 testing, milk testing, and so on. 



Ontario presents a good illustration of how a 

 new agriculture can be created, in a dozen years, 

 by co-operating methods of agricultural educa- 

 tion. Her provincial department of agriculture, 

 her experiment station, her agricultural college, 

 her various forms of extension work, and her 

 various societies of agriculturists have all worked 



