No. 4.] REPORT OF SECRETARY. xxxiii 



assisting nearly 90 towns, and about the same amount of 

 work is planned for the coming year ; but this is not enough 

 to make travel safe and easier in the hill towns. Many of 

 these will be denied the service of the trolley for years, and 

 in the meantime good roads should be constructed. The bill 

 introduced last year, but laid over for consideration by the 

 incoming Legislature, designed to give towns aid in construct- 

 ing roads, is, in the opinion of your secretary, worthy of 

 notice. This bill provides a State official to supervise the 

 construction of roads in small towns where two or more of 

 them can unite, and as much money is now wasted in con- 

 structing poor roads it would seem as if the passage of this 

 bill would materially aid the situation. Certainly good roads 

 are the first essential to the repopulating of our hill towns. 



The Agricultural College. 



At the present rate of growth our agricultural college will 

 soon need many new buildings. In fact, some are absolutely 

 necessary at once, and it is to be hoped that the Legislature 

 will grant the money to build those most needed this year. 



The college is keeping in close touch with all the advance- 

 ment in agricultural education, and while it may be doing 

 its best to keep all departments in the highest state of ef- 

 ficiency, there are some of the practical courses which need 

 better instructors and investigators, chief among which is 

 the market-garden course. This seems to have been neglected 

 more or less lately. We need the best instructors in this 

 course, as Massachusetts should produce double the amount 

 of market-garden crops that she does at present, and what is 

 more important is the need of our market gardeners from 

 time to time of help in solving their many vexing problems. 



It would seem that in the rapid expansion of the college 

 in the past few years some practical subjects — the teaching 

 of which is most important — have been lost sight of, and 

 now that agricultural expansion has pretty well covered the 

 State it would seem advisable that greater attention be paid 

 to the development of the plans already laid out, looking 

 particularly toward a very strong central organization at the 

 college, where not only students will receive the kind of in- 



