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ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMBIs['S ASSOCIATION 



Domiciled in the old building which answered for all the depart- 

 ments of a great University, we went forth to study agriculture, "as she- 

 was taught." Daily the student body was assembled, counted off into 

 squads of ten with a leader for each. There with professors to the right 

 of us, professors to the left of us, instructors in front and rear of us,, 

 with hoes, rakes, wheelbarrows, baskets, spades, and all sorts of agricul- 

 tural implements invented to tickle mother earth into bountiful harvest 

 we went forth to study "that art which doth mend nature" for two hours, 

 each day. As a member of what the rest of the boys dubbed the "infant 

 squad" I went out daily with the multitude and raked in such crumbs of 

 practical agriculture as were scattered in my vicinty by the professors. 

 of ancient languages and literature or mathematics, or the instructor in 

 military tactics, all of whom were expected to be equally expert in the 

 science of agriculture as taught in those days. Since leaving the insti- 

 tution if I have made any success as a farmer it is due no doubt to the 

 instruction in practical agriculture I received from the professor of liter- 

 ature and art of the best manner in which a hoe should be held in cutting 

 down "Simpson" weeds. If I have made a success in horticulture it ia 

 due to the instruction I received in picking and packing tomatoes on the 

 site of where the library building now stands, under the instruction of 

 the professor of horticulture, one who from those primitive methods of 

 instruction has advanced to a world wide reputation as a bacteriologist 

 and to the position of dean of the faculty. 



Our instruction in the class room consisted in having a chapter in 

 "How Crops Grow" read and commented upon by the professor of agri- 

 culture. Wearisome hours were spent in this unprofitable work in read- 

 ing books whose titles I remember if I have forgotten their contents. 

 Thus it was that agriculture was taught in ye olden time, and the 

 wonder was that agricultural education did not prove popular with 

 the student. We can now see that the fault was not with the wonder- 

 ful truths of nature but with the means and. crude methods of their pre- 

 sentation. All of this was but a beginning of a better system of instruc- 

 tion, a grouping after better methods which have since taken the place 



