178 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



literary and other public institutions, and dot our lands with theological 

 seminaries, with medical seminaries, and with military seminaries, poor 

 agriculture, whose hand sows the seed and whose arm gathers the harvest 

 on which all our earthly comforts, and even our very existence depend, as 

 yet has no seminary in which to teach her sons the most valuable of all arts. 



While this may sound a little like a fault-finding wail, it is to 

 be remembered that he was in a new part of a new state, with 

 little income and much outgo; seed was scarce and expensive. 

 After planting, it was usually a fight against the gophers, black- 

 birds, crows, and other enemies to save the seed. 



In the fall, before it was fully ripe, the squirrels, woodchucks, 

 coons, and hedgehogs were on hand early in the morning and 

 late at night devouring the crop. He had to battle against an 

 army of insects and numerous diseases of vegetable and animal 

 life. The soil seemed fickle ; floods and droughts came, and the 

 blighting effects of frost and heat withered the crop. With 

 these and many other things to contend with, his plea was not to 

 deprive other professions or classes of business, of money for 

 education, but that "poor agriculture' ' should get a share of the 

 money to obtain knowledge of meteorology, zoology, entomology, 

 chemistry, physics, drainage, conservation of .moisture, and other 

 sciences needed in farming. Mr. Lothrop is named because 

 by education, experience, and observation he showed by his 

 utterances that he was able to interpret and express the feelings 

 of the farming class truthfully and effectively. The widespread 

 sentiment of the farmers was further expressed and urged by 

 such influential and persistent men as Bela Hubbard, J. C. 

 Holmes, and Joseph R. Williams, the first president of the Col- 

 lege and a member of the constitutional convention which put 

 that important article in the constitution of 1850 requiring the 

 legislature, "as soon as practicable to provide for the establish- 

 ment of an agricultural school.' ' The legislature of Michigan 

 instructed its delegations in Congress to ask for 350,000 acres of 

 land to establish an agricultural school in this state. 



