No. 4.] AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 65 



spread special schools the education in the natural sciences 

 which seems to be so essential to those who practise the art 

 of agriculture. Just how we shall accomplish this does not 

 yet appear. But, whatever plan may be adopted, there is no 

 avoiding the conclusion that at the head of this educational 

 effort will stand the agricultural college for the training of 

 experts, teachers and leaders, and for the direction of plans 

 and methods. This, then, I believe to be the mission of agri- 

 cultural colleges. How shall this mission be executed? 



Primarily it is the function of the agricultural college (I 

 mean by the agricultural college either the separate institu- 

 tion or the agricultural department of the land-grant college) 

 to give to young men, and to young women also if they want 

 it, thorough and extended instruction in the relation of the 

 sciences to agriculture. It is incumbent upon the college, 

 also, in so far as available means will permit, to apply to 

 this instruction the best apparatus, the highest talent and the 

 latest knowledge. Moreover, the course in agriculture 

 should in no sense be subject to the charge that it evades its 

 specific purpose. While, as I have tried to show, it should 

 aim to give to a student a liberal education, a fair share of it 

 should be technical, and the subject matter, together with 

 the means of illustration, should be directly important to agri- 

 culture as an art. The relations of existing knowledge to 

 tillage, fertility and animal nutrition should not be covered 

 out of sight in a so-called general training course, no matter 

 how favorably the latter may appeal to the pedagogue. Any 

 student who is really anxious to learn what we have come to 

 speak of as agricultural science should not be allowed to turn 

 away in disappointment. Such a course of study, efficiently 

 maintained, is abundantly justified by the demand for it and 

 the profound influence it is bound to exert upon the life of 

 the people through the education along special lines of even 

 a comparatively limited number of graduates. 



It is asserted, occasionally, that the agricultural colleges 

 are unnecessary institutions ; that the instruction which they 

 are giving is not so essentially unlike that of the scientific 

 departments of other colleges as to justify the added expense 

 which they entail. This feeling was roughly expressed by a 

 New England paper not long since in a statement that cer- 



