THE IRRIGATION AGE 



393 



and Wyoming. In Massachusetts Harvard 

 University has a school of Agriculture 

 known as Bussey Institution. Besides 

 these, agricultural and mechanical colleges 

 have been organized iu Alabama, Colorado, 

 Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, 

 Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, 

 Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, 

 New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, 

 Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode 

 Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, 

 Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington. 

 Separate institutions of this sort are 

 maintained for colored students in Ala- 

 bama, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, 

 North Carolina, South Carolina, and Vir- 

 ginia. Massachusetts has the only college 

 whose curriculum is wholly devoted to 

 agriculture. 



In the universities in which courses in 

 agriculture are maintained, the general 

 tendency is to make this course correspond 

 in scope and thoroughness with those given 

 in the other departments, to divide the 

 instruction in agriculture among an in- 

 creasing number of specialists, and to pro- 

 vide buildings and apparatus and illus- 

 trative material on a scale in keeping with 

 those in other branches. At the same 

 time efforts are making to bring .the uni- 

 versity in close touch with the masses of 

 farmers through special schools, farmers' 

 institutes, nature teachings, and other 

 forms of university eqtension work. Along 

 with this is the deepening and strengthen- 

 ing of the scientific and practical re- 

 searches, carried on with a view to widen- 

 ing the world's knowledge of the facts, 

 laws, and processes required for the im- 

 provement of agriculture. 



The classes in agriculture in these schools 

 range in enrollment from 200 to 900 stu- 

 dents. The total enrollment is 30.000. 

 The full course in agriculture covers four 

 years, and practical farmers who know 

 enough of other matters to make them in- 

 telligent and desirable citizens are being 

 sent out from these colleges at the rate of 

 8,000 a year, or 80,000 in a decade. That 

 -they will assist wonderfully in the devel- 



opment of the country need not be doubted. 

 Their knowledge and training will enable 

 them to get more out of the earth and 

 themselves than the tens of thousands of 

 other earnest and honest men who have 

 taken up homesteads and gone to farming 

 without any knowledge of or preparation 

 for the cultivation of the soil. 



In an article in the Year Book of the 

 Department of Agriculture on "Some 

 Types of American Agricultural Colleges/' 

 A. C. True, Ph. D., director of the gov- 

 ernment's experiment stations; describes 

 the essential features of some of these in- 

 stitutions of learning. Of the Massachu- 

 setts Agricultural College, which is near 

 Amherst, on a farm of 400 acres, situated 

 in a most beautiful part of the Connecti- 

 cut River Valley; he says: 



"In 1897 the college had permanent 

 endowment funds aggregating $360,000,' 

 anl its buildings, farms and equipments 

 were valued at about $315,000. The col- 

 lege buildings include combined dormitory 

 and class-room building, chapel and 

 library, laboratory for chemistry and 

 physics, entomological laboratory with in- 

 sectary, botanic laboratory and museum, 

 drill hall, dormitory, president's house, 

 several residences for professors, farm- 

 house, boarding-house, horticultural plant 

 houses, and barns, including creamery and 

 dairy laboratory. The experiment station 

 also has a chemical laboratory, botanical 

 laboratory with plant house and barns. 



"On the farm 150 acres are under, culti- 

 vation with a variety of field crops, and 

 the extensive college barn is stocked with 

 100 head of cattle and equipped with the 

 most improved agricultural implements 

 and machinery. The horticultural grounds 

 cover 100 acres, with orchards, vineyards, 

 small fruit and vegetable plantations, and 

 groves of forest trees. Much attention is 

 given to Horticulture and landscape gar- 

 dening, and the ample plant houses are 

 well stocked with numerous varieties of 

 oxotics. Some eighty acres are devoted 

 to the work of the experiment station, in- 

 cluding numerous plat experiments with 



