-CHRONOLOGY. 



The first effort to establish in Massachusetts an institution 

 where scientific and practical agriculture should be taught, was 

 made in 1849, by Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, in an address deliv- 

 ered in September of that year, before the Norfolk Agricultural 

 Society upon the subject of agricultural education. The sugges- 

 tions contained in this address were received with so much favor, 

 that the following year (1850) a bill was prepared providing for 

 the establishment of an agricultural college and an experimental 

 farm. This bill passed the Senate without a dissenting vote but 

 was rejected in the House. The next step was the creation of a 

 Board of Commissioners, whose duty should be to report, at the 

 next session of the legislature, upon the expediency of establish- 

 ing agricultural schools or colleges. This commission which con- 

 sisted of Marshall P. Wilder, Edward Hitchcock and others, made 

 their report to the legislature in 1851. This report embraced the 

 investigations of Dr. Hitchcock in regard to the agricultural 

 schools and colleges of Europe, and contained an account of more 

 than 350 of these institutions. Nothing further was done towards 

 organizing a college of agriculture till 1856. In that year several 

 of the gentlemen who had been most active in the project for 

 planting a college, now associated together for the establishment 

 of a school, and obtained an act of incorporation under the title 

 of the Massachusetts School of Agriculture. Of the persons 

 named in this Act, the name of Marshall P. Wilder heads the list. 

 In 1860, its charter was transferred to several enterprising citi- 

 zens of Springfield, who determined to raise by subscription $75,- 

 000 for the opening of the school in that city, relying upon the 

 legislature for a further endowment. This project would probably 

 have succeeded, had not the call to arms absorbed public atten- 

 tion. In 1858, Hon. Justin S. Merrill, representative from Ver_ 



