150 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. [Pub. Doc. 



have had several presidents of agricultural colleges, includ- 

 ing Japan. There have been, I believe, six presidents of 

 various agricultural coUeijes who have graduated from the 

 Massachusetts Agricultural College, and there have been a 

 numl)er of professors of agriculture, professors of botany 

 and horticulture, and professors of mathematics ; and then, 

 if you look at the experiment stations, we find that there too 

 we are especially strong. The graduates of our college are 

 all over this broad land, occupying responsible positions. 

 I feel that the college serves agriculture as truly, and in one 

 sense in a higher field, in fitting these men for these im- 

 portant classes of work, as it would by simply training them 

 to go back upon the farm. 



Now, I say that when, as the records prove, we turn out 

 more than one-half of our men who are either on farms or 

 directly connected with agriculture, it is a very credital)le 

 record, for it should l)e remembered in judging us in this 

 respect, first, that by no means all of those who come to the 

 college expect to become farmers They do not come there 

 with that intention. They come from all the various walks 

 of life ; they come from cities and large manufacturing 

 places. They come because they know we give a good, 

 broad general training which fits a man splendidly for any 

 pursuit in life. 



And I may be pardoned for saying right here that the 

 college gives one of the very best trainings for the medical 

 profession. I should say as many as fifteen or twenty in all 

 among our graduates have gone into various medical schools, 

 a large number of them into Harvard, and they have taken 

 a very high position in their classes, and have usually won 

 the prize of positions either on the stafl" of the Massachusetts 

 General or the Boston City Hospital. One of the most suc- 

 cessful of these, a friend of mine, gave his most emphatic 

 testimony to the efiect that his training in the Massachusetts 

 Agricultural College gave him a better preparation for the 

 study of medicine than the training which could be obtained 

 in any of the so-called classical colleges. He said that the 

 graduates of Harvard College itself who studied with him in 

 the medical school admitted that he was immensely better 

 prepared for the study of medicine than they were, better 



