THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL CONVENTION. 77 



ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE. 



By 



Prof. E. Davenport, Dean. 



Dean Davenport : Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen. 

 I cannot come to you tonight altogether as a dairyman but rath- 

 er, as your Vice President has said, as the representative of the 

 College of Agriculture of this great State. That is not saying 

 that I know absolutely nothing about the dairy business. I have 

 always been a farmer, have lived longer on the farm than in the 

 colleges. For years I was a commercial dairyman. I consid- 

 ered myself an expert dairyman. I am so far from home I can 

 brag about it on this occasion. 



I did not come here to talk about dairying but about the 

 Agricultural College at the University of Illinois. 



The subject as stated on the program is the Illinois College 

 of Agriculture — It's Place as an Educational Institution in the 

 State and Its Needs. What is it that the Agricultural College 

 is doing I will tell you in just a few minutes. One thing it is 

 teaching agriculture of various kinds to 750 students in the 

 University, and this week and next there will be more than a 

 thousand farmers and young men down to the University doing 

 extra work. We are so full that we do not dare advertise this 

 two weeks' course because if any more came than did last year 

 we could not take care of them. 



It offers eighty different courses, and it receives for two 

 weeks in the winter all who come to study for those two weeks 

 any phase of agriculture which they care to take up. 



Another thing, it conducts experiments along practically 

 every line in the agricultural field. Now one thing we must do 

 in teaching and that is keep well within what we know on the 

 subject. It does not do for a teacher to draw on his imagina- 



