ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 24 1 



subject, or rather all the subject, suggested by the name. Superficialty 

 prevailed, but no one recognized i t. We see it now well enough, but 

 through advantages not then enjoyed. We will do well if with all our 

 helps the agricultural departments are not too open still to this criticism. 



5. No one began to realize the unavoidable cost of agricultural edu- 

 cation given in anything like a truly sensible way. A lecture room with 

 a desk, some chairs or settees (not very many), a few charts and pictures 

 hung upon the walls — these constituted a professor's equipment aside 

 from the things to be found in the barn or in the fields. Is it a wonder 

 that students were few and that enthusiasm was at a low ebb? Chemical 

 and physical laboratories were known tO' need large and varied supplies 

 of a.pparatus and material, but that equivalent facilities should be fur- 

 nished the teacher of agriculture no one, not even the latter, surmised. ; 



6. Without further enumeration it may be said that the agricultural 

 education of the first quarter of a century in our land grant colleges was 

 poor and halting because it was* before its time. The inertia of the ages 

 was upon it. There was no self g eneration of power. A second birth was' 

 needed here as elsewhere, a birth of the spirit and of the understanding. 



Let us be thankful for the tribulations of the pasit. Let us square 

 ourselves to the new conditions, and by the new interpretations of re- 

 quirements and of possibilities. Let us give due credit to those who, 

 working in the dark and under restraints and limitations, made possible 

 the dawning light we enjoy and straightened the path in which* our feet 

 may tread. 



The Opportunity in Agriculture. 



THOMAS P. HUNT, DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 

 AND DOMES TIC SCIENCE, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY. 



The history of education for, in, and by agriculture is always a fasci- 

 nating subject and it is difficult to resist its recital. Its history is no part 



