250 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



pies of grain, mostly worm eaten, a collection of patent office models, 

 mostly of machines, which: had never been used because of their vis- 

 ionary character, a few framed prints portraying animals of impossible 

 conformation or in impossible attitudes, and a so-called model farm was 

 considered the sine que non for an equipment. A properly equipped farm 

 is, indeed, a desirable adjunct to an ideal equipped college of agricul- 

 ture, but other things were more essential. A farm, however, to serve 

 the highest purpose of instruction to say nothing of experimentation 

 cannot be made a model for a farmer to follow any more than a uni- 

 versity machine shop can be made a model for a shoe factory. 



Just as the teaching of sciences has been found more expensive than 

 the teaching of classics, so the teaching of the applied sciences has been 

 found more expensive than the teaching of abstract science. 



And of all the applied sciences the teaching of agriculture has been 

 found to be vastly the most expensive, and it must, in the nature of the 

 case, continue so. It is only during the past decade that the movement 

 for the proper equipment of the colleges of agriculture has taken tan- 

 gible form. The great State of Illinois has felt this movement and has 

 bravely come to the front with the structures we are dedicating today, 

 and with the equipment so soon promised will be second to none in the 

 union. 



It may not be out of place here to inqiiire why agriculture has been 

 slow in coming to its own. It is because of the difficulty of the prob- 

 lems involved. The political economist has long ago divided people en- 

 gaged in gainful occupations into four or five classes. Leaving aside the 

 work of the serving class, the work of the world is divided into three 

 classes, viz., changes in substance or natural products from which re- 

 sults agriculture and mining; changes of form, from which results man- 

 ufacturing; and change of place, from which results trading and com- 

 merce. Did it ever occure to you that of all these great classes agri- 

 culture alone deals with living things. Why has the cause of pear 

 blight and the metabolism of nitrogen in the clover plant been so long 

 hidden from the human understanding? It was first necessary to invent 

 a high power microscope. 



