338 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



tural department. Admission to tliis department was to be 

 free to the inliabitants of said town, upon such conditions 

 as might be determined by a board of examiners, to be com- 

 posed of the scliool committee of said town and an equal 

 number of the trustees of said academy. 



I am indebted to Mr. Ralph H. Cushman of Bernardston 

 for the following facts relative to Powers Institute : — 



At a meeting of the trustees held Nov. 15, 1859, it was 

 voted to refer the matter of memorializing the Legislature, 

 for the purpose of obtaining pecuniary aid from the State 

 for an agricultural professorship, to a committee of five, to 

 consider the matter and report at a future meeting of the 

 Board of Trustees. At a meeting held Jan. 7, 1860, it was 

 voted that the memorial to the Legislature be adopted and 

 signed by all the trustees present. A committee of five was 

 appointed to present the memorial to the Legislature. 



The petition, dated March 16, 1861, recited the establish- 

 ment and growth of Powers Institute, and stated : — 



Mr. Ward, the Principal of the Institute, with the sanction 

 of the Board of Trustees, established an Agricultural Depart- 

 ment in said school, in which the elementary and practical 

 principles of all the different branches of Agriculture should 

 be taught, the same as Geography, Geometry, Civil Engineer- 

 ing or Botany have heretofore been taught: — -that classes have 

 been formed for the Study of Agriculture, having regular recita- 

 tions at stated periods — and that considerable progress has, 

 in that way, been made in what your memorialists believe 

 to be, a somewhat new method of studying. Two obstacles 

 have impeded the progress which we believe, would, otherwise, 

 have been made, — viz. 1st the want of a proper Text Book 

 for the Scholars; — and 2nd the want of a proj^er person prop- 

 erly qualified by study, observation and experience to teach 

 and lecture in that particular branch. The first of tliose diffi- 

 culties, your memorialists are glad to learn, will soon be 

 remedied by the publication of a "Manual of Agriculture for 

 Schools," by the Board of Agriculture of this Commonwealth. 

 But the second obstacle cannot be adequately removed without 

 further pecuniary means. 



Mr. Cushman further states that the records show that 

 " in the spring term of 1859 a class was formed numbering 



