320 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



events; the deduction of experience was rapidly applied. 

 The progress making towards a state of strong, regular, 

 systematized action, facilitated by each mistake in the past, is 

 very perceptible. The nearer, however, this condition is 

 attained, the closer one has to look to observe progress. It 

 might appear to some that the College has already settled into 

 channels of well-defined, systematized activity, quite satisfac- 

 tory, since it has already begun to wear the aspect of older 

 institutions. 



While there have been no radical changes introduced the 

 past year, some new features have been added, and a forward 

 movement is observed along the line of college studies. 



One of your Committee, at least, has long been in sympathy 

 with the aims of" the College, and having for some time 

 followed its fortunes with ever-awakening interest, he is little 

 inclined to confine himself to suggestions that come of a brief 

 period of official relation to it ; and he will remark, further, 

 that he has studied with larger interest the outlines of the 

 scheme, and the spirit that directs the several parts, than 

 details that may readily be altered, as experience shall deter- 

 mine, and as do not involve change of men, or are not of a 

 fundamental character. 



Recent annual reports have entered into, with somewhat of 

 minuteness and much ability, the workings of the College. It 

 is not deemed desirable to repeat here what may be expected 

 to appear in the annual report of the College presented to the 

 general court. There has been about the same quantity and 

 quality of material to be wrought upon and made into intelli- 

 gent men, and there has been no change of instructors. 



Perhaps we shall record a deepening insight on their 

 part, as to the superiority and fitness of methods, that 

 rely more upon cultivating in the student a spirit of 

 inquiry and capacity for independent thought and personal 

 investigation, than the mere imposing on the memory the con- 

 tents of text-books. We are pleased to hear the president 

 say, after a most excellent recitation of the class in botany, 

 that he had adopted the method of Agassiz, — a method whose 

 worth is surprisingly illustrated by a four-year-old botanist of 

 his own family. The same method of instruction introduced 

 at the beginning of an education and continued through later 



