E18T0RY OF AGRICULTURE 85 



mechanic arts has been included, together with the 

 old established arts subjects and the newer instruction 

 in the sciences. The department of agriculture in 

 that institution was taken over by the State in 1904 

 and chartered as the New York State College of Ag- 

 riculture. The period between those two dates, 1868 

 to 1903, marks the full crystallization of the idea of 

 collegiate instruction in agriculture based on careful 

 scientific investigations as represented by the agri- 

 cultural experiment stations, which were an out- 

 growth of the colleges. In 1879, the Cornell Univer- 

 sity Agricultural Experiment Station was organized 

 by the faculty in agriculture, and in the same year 

 the students of agriculture in the same university in- 

 augurated a movement which resulted in the found- 

 ing, in 1882, of the New York State Agricultural Ex- 

 periment Station at Geneva, which was the second in- 

 stitution of its kind in the country, and antedated by 

 five years the foundation of such institutions in all the 

 states by the federal act of 1887. As early as 1876, 

 a private agricultural experiment station was estab- 

 lished at Houghton Farm, in Orange County. It 

 continued until the death of its founder, Lawson Val- 

 entine, in 1891. 



Isaac P. Eoberts, the first permanent professor of 

 agriculture in Cornell University, and for many years 

 the dean of agricultural teachers in America, was the 

 director of the Agricultural Experiment Station at 

 Ithaca. His period of service, from 1874 to 1903, as 

 head of the agricultural work at Ithaca, covered the 

 pioneer period in agricultural education. That of 



