ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



235 



bility of securing a faculty. Three men for other departments were 

 elected, before a selection was made for the place constantly first in con- 

 sideration and deemed by all to b e first in importance. A search for a 

 man proved futile. It wasi currently said at the time that there was but 

 one professor of agriculture, and that there was no other man fit for such 

 professorship in America. However, something must be done. All felt 

 that action of 'some kind should not be delayed, and on the very day of 

 the inaugural exercises when the doors of the institution were first offi- 

 cially thrown open, Willard F. B liss, of Nokomis, Illinois, was elected 

 professor of agriculture. At the time he wasi the owner and manager of 

 a large farm near the town just named; he was a graduate of Yale col- 

 lege, as that famous American center of learning was then entitled. He 

 had traveled abroad, and had pretty well incommand the Latin, Greek, 

 and French languages. There w ere at the time in the country some men 

 famed for attainments in science but not one of these had been trained 

 in his specialty in an educational institution, though certain of their 

 number had gained a start through the meager instruction then afforded 

 at the principle seats of higher ed ucation in this* country and abroad. 

 Darwin's Origin of Species had been published almost a decade before the 

 time now spoken of, but outside o f theology and the realm of theoretical 

 science little attention had been paid to the doctrines therein advanced. 

 It certainly would not have been c (;nsidered a matter to his credit if a can- 

 didate for the professiorship in agriculture was known to have accepted 

 these dostrines as a basis for. his investigations and for his instruction. 

 Indeed almost the only science th ought to be of real worth to a man in the 

 position named was chemistry. So his Latin and Greek and French 

 languages and to his practical racquaintances with rural affairs the world 

 of knowledge designated chemist ry would have been considered a val- 

 uable addition. Barin von Lieoi g was at the splendid pinnacle of his 

 well earned fame and the renown of his epoch-making researches was as 

 great in America as in Europe. Had Mr. Bliss or any one else proposed 

 to qualify himself for teaching scientific agriculture he no doubt would 

 have endeavored to gain first a si tting at the feet of this highly revered 



