SECRETARY'S REPORT. 175 



an average of 10 to 12 attendants. Applicants are required to 

 be over 20 years old and to have been in practice with shep- 

 herds four years. The course takes place in February and 

 lasts four weeks. 



To these courses was added another in 1860, for school teach- 

 ers, which is limited to three weeks in the autumn vacations of 

 the public schools. The principal object is to provide the 

 means of a continuation of their agricultural education, which 

 was found to be needed in many parts of the country. Such 

 teachers only are invited to attend this course as have busied 

 themselves on their own or on the school grounds, with agricul- 

 tural labors, in the formation of means for improvement in 

 agricultural education. The instruction embraces the whole 

 of agricultural labor, with special researches into the imperfec- 

 tions and failings which appear in different parts of the. country. 

 The number who may attend each course, is fixed at 25. 



Instruction in these several courses is given partly by the 

 regular corps of professors of the institute, and partly by per- 

 sons from abroad who make a specialty of certain pursuits, who 

 go to Hohenheim for the purpose, and the arrangement is such 

 that the pupils during their stay in Hohenheim are occupied 

 the whole of each day, partly in hearing lectures, and partly in 

 demonstrations in the field, in the stalls, in the collections, or 

 in excursions, and partly in the solution of prescribed tasks. 



These may be called regularly established courses of special 

 instruction. But in addition, what may be called extraordinary 

 or occasional courses, are also given, as, for instance, in 1853, a 

 course upon silk culture, another on bee culture and on the 

 nursery business. They took place in the afternoon of each 

 ■ Wednesday, from four to six, and were attended by twenty 

 young men, mostly sub-teachers or assistants in the schools. 

 In 1855, another course was given upon silk culture, designed 

 for the pupils of the normal schools, of whom one hundred and 

 thirty-four attended. A similar course of agricultural instruc- 

 tion was given in 1861 for the school teachers in the jurisdiction 

 of Stuttgart, in which fifty-two teachers of the public schools 

 engaged. The lectures were accompanied by demonstrations 

 in the field, and in the collections, an afternoon of each week, 

 and the design was to prepare the teachers for holding evening 

 agricultural schools in winter. And so in 1852-3, on the occa- 



