February 17, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



61 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article : — Agricultural Education 61 



Notes on the Eastern American Spruces J. G. Jack. 62 



New or Little-known Plants: — Aster iunceus, Ait. (With figure ) 



Merriit L. Fernald. 



Ipcmcea Briggsii G. W Oliver. 



Cultural Department: — Propagating Plants by Cuttings T. D. Hatfield. 



Greenhouses for Amateur Gardeners J. N. Gerard. 



Notes from the Botanic Garden of Smith College Edward J. Canning. 



Water-lilies IV. Tricker. 



Cypripedium Morrisianum 4. Dim mock. 



Correspondence : — Some Rare New Jersey Plants F. L. Bassett. 



More About Choke Cherries John Craig. 



Meetings of Societies : — Western New York Horticultural Society. — II 



Notes 



1 llustration : — Aster junceus. Ait., Fig. 9 



Agricultural Education. 



AT one of the meetings of the Association of American 

 Colleges and Experiment Stations a committee was 

 appointed to examine Methods of Teaching Agriculture, 

 and at the convention held in Washington last November 

 the first report was submitted, and this has been published 

 in full as circular No. 32 from the Office of Experiment 

 Stations, in the Department of Agriculture. The first point 

 to note is that a tabulation and summary of the replies sent 

 from fifty agricultural colleges in response to letters of 

 inquiry show that in this country, at least, there is nothing 

 like a standard for instruction in agriculture. This does 

 not mean simply that there are differences in the methods 

 pursued in the various colleges which arise from different 

 conditions ; it means that there is no approach to anything 

 like uniformity in courses of study or in the method of 

 pursuing them. These colleges differ so widely in the 

 topics taught, the order in which they are taken up, the time 

 given to each one, and in the adjustment of the proportion 

 of work in the class-room to practical work in the labora- 

 tory or on the farm, that it is almost impossible to compare 

 one institution with another, or any of them, with atypical 

 scheme for a regular course of three or four years. The 

 committee, therefore, present their summary of data with 

 the negative conclusion that they are not prepared to make 

 any recommendation until more time has been taken 

 to study and digest the facts presented. Indeed, the 

 committee point out that the subject can hardly be dis- 

 cussed intelligently until there is a definite nomenclature 

 in regard to the methods of agricultural teaching. The 

 term "agricultural" is applied in abroad way not only 

 to plant production, but to animal physiology, various spe- 

 cial industries like dairying and sugar-making, to farm engi- 

 neering and mechanics, to farm policy, including rural law, 

 agricultural bookkeeping, etc. How the various subdi- 

 visions of the general subject are to be named the com- 

 mittee has not yet decided. 



But, apart from the summary of data concerning our own 

 colleges, there is an instructive series of observations upon 

 the leading features of European institutions for agricul- 



tural education. From this we find that the systematic 

 efforts to educate people in agriculture in Europe are much 

 more complex than ours, ranging from elementary instruc- 

 tion in the public schools up to post-graduate courses for 

 those who have already taken the university degree. 

 Beginning at the bottom, in many European countries 

 there are (1) farmers' meetings like our own farmers' 

 institutes, held for a day or so, at which there is a lec- 

 ture or two and a conference, (2) short courses of lectures 

 on special topics and on the general subject of agri- 

 culture, (3) evening schools for elementary instruction, 

 (4) classes in agriculture in public or private primary 

 schools, (5) courses in the normal schools to train agricul- 

 tural teachers for primary schools, (6) courses in agriculture 

 in the secondary public or private schools for general 

 education, (7) schools of a higher grade managed by indi- 

 viduals or corporations and subsidized by the Government, 

 (8) schools of the same grade, but exclusively under the 

 Government control, (9) institutions for higher education in 

 agriculture only, (10) the same kind of institutions, but 

 connected with universities, and lastly, departments in the 

 universities themselves. The special thing which arrests 

 attention is the relatively large place given to the higher, 

 or what we should call post-graduate education in agricul- 

 tural science. Opportunities are offered for thorough train- 

 ing in any or all the sciences as applied to agriculture. 

 The result of this is that the experiment stations, the 

 schools of agriculture and the agricultural departments of 

 the Government never lack for well-trained investigators or 

 teachers, and, besides this, industries like sugar-making, 

 which require scientific knowledge of a high order, can 

 always find skilled laborers. 



This is the most important feature in the whole system. 

 Improvements in education usually begin in institutions of 

 the higher grades ; good primary schools, at least, only 

 flourish in conjunction with the best institutions of the 

 highest erade. It is the colleges where teachers are 

 educated, and the higher institutions of learning which 

 furnish an educated public opinion that make good 

 schools of a lower grade possible, and until we have insti- 

 tutions where a body of workers can be trained to agricul- 

 tural research our whole system, from the primary 

 instruction in agricultural science upward, will be struc- 

 turally weak. Of course, as it is stated in this report, some 

 of our workers and teachers can get their training in foreign 

 schools, but, while this is better than no training at all, they 

 acquire a certain alien habit of thought which is a bar to 

 their highest success at home. In our own country the 

 conspicuous improvements in agriculture have been made 

 by investigators in scientific fields. Our marked advance 

 in fruit-culture has been due to the discovery of methods 

 for checking the ravages of insects and of fungous diseases. 

 Great improvements in dairying have been made by the 

 chemists in our experiment stations, and a more rational sys- 

 tem of animal feeding, which has added millions of dollars 

 to the value of our stock-raising interests, has come from 

 the same source. It would seem, therefore, that one of our 

 first efforts should be to raise the standard of our col- 

 leges of agriculture so that they may turn out a class 

 of men who have a broad grasp of the entire subject and 

 are capable of making original investigations in the various 

 sciences which are connected with the general subject ; 

 and before students are capable of making the most of a 

 really high-grade course in agriculture they must, beyond 

 question, have a thorough college training in the principles 

 of the various sciences which underlie agriculture. 



At the other extreme of the educational system, that is, 

 in the primary schools, the first necessity is competent 

 teachers. How children may receive elementary instruc- 

 tion in ordinary schools is well set forth in the account of a 

 visit to a school in Belgium which has a well-equipped 

 teacher. At the time of this visit the teacher was giving a 

 lesson on the properties and uses of milk to a class of boys 

 and girls about twelve years old. By means of elementary 

 chemical experiments and skillful questions, with samples 



