OF PENNSYLYANIA. 47 



them; and nothing is more conclusively settled than that 

 those students who are the most studious and industrious 

 in class, work the most efficiently and are the most trust- 

 worthy in the performance of their daily three hours' work. 



3d. As an Experimental Institution^ the Agricultural 

 College of Pennsylvania has an unbounded fielc^ for labor. 

 The principles of Agricultural science, which shall ulti- 

 mately constitute the subject of instruction in its class- 

 rooms, are as yet only very imperfectly developed, and so 

 great is the labor, expense, and time involved in making 

 scientific agricultural experiments, that as yet little has 

 been done in this direction. In the embarrassed condition 

 of the finances of the college, it has not been possible to 

 employ more scientific aid than was absolutely necessary 

 to maintain a proper degree of efficiency in the educational 

 and practical departments, nor could the other expenses re- 

 quisite for extended scientific investigation be met with 

 the means heretofore at the disposal of the Board; a few ex- 

 periments upon the manufacture, preservation, and use of 

 manures for the growth of crops, have, however, been in- 

 augurated, while corresponding initiatory steps have been 

 taken to experiment in other departments. It is most 

 earnestly to be hoped that the recent appropriation of public 

 lands by Congress to the state for agricultural purposes will 

 afford means for the development of this department of the 

 institution. The development of no other department 

 would yield richer and more lasting results, or would confer 

 more substantial benefit upon agricultural practice than 

 this. It must not, however, be supposed that these results 

 will manifest themselves at once, or that they will pay as 

 experiments are being made : as well might the farmer ex- 

 pect to reap his crop the day he sows his grain. They will, 

 however, ultimately pay a thousand fold, as have the prac- 

 tical application of the sciences of electricity, heat and 

 optics, in the present day, paid for the half century of ap- 

 parently unpractical, purely scientific investigations that 

 led to the results now obtained through* them. 



4th. As a means of protecting the industrial interests of the 

 State, and most especially the agricultural interest, from the 

 sale of bad or worthless or top high priced material (as 



