might have been expected, where experience 

 could not be relied on for guidance, very differ- 

 ent views obtained in regard to the kind, and 

 method of the education most needed by the 

 farmer. 



Many advocated the transfer of the future 

 fund to the literary institutions already existing, 

 on the supposition that the agricultural educa- 

 tion most needed is the education as that term 

 has always been understood of the agriculturist. 

 His great need, they said, is the mental discipline 

 which a literary training is best fitted to impart. 

 To this it was replied, that whatever the benefits 

 of a course in a literary institution, such a course 

 would leave the student comparatively ignorant 

 of those branches of science that are especially 

 related to his occupation, and besides this it is 

 found almost invariably to educate the student 

 from instead of for the farm. 



Others contended that practical schools were 

 especially needed, schools in which the student 

 would regularity take part in agricultural labors 

 and thus acquire skill in all farming operations. 

 The advocates of this plan seemed to overlook 

 the fact that it is not agriculture as an art that 

 needs to be taught so much as agriculture as a 

 science ; it is to the sciences upon which the art 

 is founded that we must look for all future pro- 

 gress. The art of agriculture may probably be 

 better learned, and much cheaper, on a well 

 managed farm than in any college whatever, 

 and young men from the farm are most of them 

 already familiar with all farming operations. It 

 is something more than this which the young 

 farmer needs to enable him to grapple success- 

 fully with the difficulties that will beset his 

 pathway in the future. 



Still another view, and one which appears to 

 have prevailed, maintained that colleges very 

 different from ordinary literary institutions, were 

 required to meet the wants of the farmer and 

 other industrial classes, or to comply with the 

 terms of the law which called the agricultural 

 colleges into existence. That a new course 

 of instruction must be devised to give the stu- 

 dent useful familiarity with all the physical 

 sciences on which the productive industries of 

 the country are based, and a different method of 

 instruction pursued so that the objective and 

 concrete shall, as far as possible, take the place 

 of the verbal and abstract. That work in the 

 laboratory with the means and instruments of 

 investigation is preferable to a lesson learned 

 from a text book, and that the aim should be to 

 make students as familiar with methods of in- 

 vestigation as with the results. In such pursuits 

 it is claimed that the student will learn to ob- 

 serve, and compare, to classify, to reason, and to 

 describe with accuracy, and, in short, obtain a 

 mental discipline more useful to the working 

 farmer or mechanic than that generally obtain- 

 ed through purely literary studies. 



There is, however, no practical difficulty in 

 uniting these different plans to some extent. It 



is an advantage to the student to have variety in 

 his studies; more in the aggregate can be accom- 

 plished, and a more systematical culture obtain- 

 ed. For example, if a student begins the day 

 with mathematical studies, and after a good les- 

 son is somewhat wearied, then botany, zoology, 

 or chemistry will be pursued for a time in the 

 laboratory with absolute freshness; then after a 

 few hours spent in good, healthy, vigorous labor 

 the study of some ancient or modern language 

 will add little to the fatigue, and much to the 

 scholarship. A variety of studies, mathematical, 

 scientific, and literary, and a variety of labor, 

 scientific, mechanical or agricultural, will best 

 secure that liberal and practical education which 

 the industrial classes need in the several pur- 

 suits and professions of life. 



The following branches are considered import- 

 ant to a good agricultural education and are 

 taught more or less thoroughly in all the colleges 

 of this class. In some of them a much fuller 

 course than is here indicated is provided. 



Chemistry, mineralogy and geology are taught 

 in their elements, and in their applications to 

 improvement of the soil, to the arts and manu- 

 factures, and to mining and metallurgy. 



Mathematics in all its branches and applica- 

 tions to business accounts, to surveying, engi- 

 neering, navigation and astronomy. 



Physics, and its applications to the mechanical 

 and useful arts, and meteorology. 



Botany structural, physiological and system- 

 atic in its relations to field crops, gardening, or- 

 charding and forestry. 



Zoology, etc., the structure and classification 

 of animals, the laws of life as applied to their 

 profitable management in health, and their 

 treatment in disease. 



Political economy and civil government. 



The ample means of illustrating such applica- 

 tions of science to the various arts and indus- 

 tries, constitutes the peculiar feature of the ag- 

 ricultural colleges. The extent of the means of 

 illustration may differ in different institutions 

 according to their resources, but the method of 

 employing abundant and practical illustration is 

 alike in all. The lesson is not simply given by 

 book or voice, the student is made to see it with 

 his own eyes, and do it with his own hands. 



The following state institutions have already 

 been established upon the national endowment, 

 together with the date of their foundation. 



Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama.. 1872 



Arkansas Industrial University 1872 



Agricultural, Miueralouical and Mechanical Uni- 

 versity of California 1869 



Sheffield Scientific laboratory, Yale College 1846 



Agricultural Department Delaware CoLege 1870 



Georgia State Collection of Agricultuial and Me- 

 chanical Arts 1872 



Nortti-Georg'a Agricultural College at Dalilonea..l873 



Illinois Industrial University 1867 



Purdue University, Agricultural College of Indiana.l8J4 



Iowa State Agricultural College 1869 



Kansas Agricultural College 1863 



Agricultural and Mechanical College, Kentucky 



University 1866 



Agricultural and Mechanical College, Louisiana. . . .1874 

 Maine State Collection of Agricultural and Me- 

 chanical Arts 1868 



