at in the report, we conceive to have been, acquiring for himself 

 and assistants a mastery of all the minute details of glaw-k 

 culture, as applied to investigating the conditions of plant </rou'th. 

 The grand results of this mode of research, as recently developed 

 by French and German scientists, have so transformed vegetable 

 physiology within the last twenty-five years, that we here record 

 our thanks to the Bussey Institution for the promise which we see, 

 in these toilsome experiments, of new scientific harvests from a 

 prolific field as yet almost uncultivated on this side of the A r - 

 lantic. 



The small number of students in attendance is regarded, in some 

 quarters, as evidence that the Bussey Institution is not a succ 

 There are various reasons why it probably may not, for years to 

 come, be successful as a school, judged by the length of the roll-call 

 merely. It cannot, however, fail to exert a widely-useful educational 

 influence on public sentiment, if its Faculty simply labor to demon- 

 strate how potent a lever the method of scientific investigation H 

 for the elevation of agriculture. So soon as science can find among 

 our agriculturists a constituency which is equal to the intellectual 

 appreciation in detail of her spirit and her method, so soon we shall 

 have good agricultural schools, amply supported and frequented. 



May we not hope for the speedy coming of a time, when the re- 

 sults of the scientific study of the soil-depths and the plant-depths 

 shall excite the popular interest as it is now stirred by the revela- 

 tions that now reach us from the star-depths ? Chemistry is to these 

 mysteries, that invite all our studies of the summer days, as astron- 

 omy has been to the arcana which most keenly challenge our in- 

 quiry in the winter nights. New York Tribune, January, 1874. 



PROFESSOR ATHERTON, LATE OF THE ILLINOIS INDUSTRIAL UNI- 

 VERSITY, AND NOW OF THE RODGERS SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, OX 

 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



Professor Atherton, commenting on a journal which had spoken 

 of " Agricultural Colleges " as failures, meaning by " agricultural 

 colleges" those which received, like the University of California, 

 .the National Grant of 1862, speaks as follows : 



The assertion just mentioned is both fallacious and absurdly 

 inaccurate. It is fallacious, because the institutions were never 



