444 
THE RURAL MEW-YORKER. 
JULY 6 
whereupon the Dutchman said: “ Now dake 
yourselis home. I sets de parn shust vare I 
please.” So I set to work to build a barn of 
suitable size and of convenient arrangement, 
keeping in view both the size of the farm, the 
amount of farming I proposed to do, and also, 
the latitude of the country where the farm is 
located. Of course, I especially make a note 
of these two facts for the benefit of other 
young farmers who may begin operations on 
a run-down farm—it is not wise to build too 
large a barn on a small farm, nor to double- 
bdard, felt-line, and “ dig out in a hill ” a 
barn for the ordinarily mild climate in this 
section of Virginia. Colts, cattle and sheep 
do very well in this climate running in the 
fields all the winter, with the exception of 
periods of storms, winds and sleets, which 
seldom last more than 24 hours, and in most 
winters we rarely have to feed much before 
Christmas. Taking into consideration these 
facts, and others which I may at some time 
refer to, I hit upon the following barn plan. 
I will give exactly as I built from it, pointing 
out my mistake*, so that other young farmers 
may not fall into the errors of my way, should 
any one ever decide to adopt the plan shown 
at Figure 169. 
The main building is 24x38 feet with 15-foot 
posts, (the posts ought to have been 20 feet) 
with a 12-foot lean-to all around. The 
ground plan is drawn on the scale of one- 
eighth of an inch to the foot. The capacity of 
this barn is eight stalls for horses, four of 
them are roomy for harnessing work 
horses, and four smaller for horses, or colts, 
that are not worked. The sheds which are 
planked “up or down” on the north or west 
sides, will hold 50 calves and 100 sheep. The 
cows find ample shelter and protection under 
the open sheds on the south side and east end. 
The closed sheds are furnished with stanch¬ 
ions, along the outer walls, also with gates 
for partitioning them off. The loft is all one 
open area, extending over the main build 
ingand sheds, and is closely laid with straight- 
edged plank*. The design of the ground-plan 
and loft, will be better understood from the 
following diagram. The joists over the stalls 
are seven feet in the clear; the joists over 
the shed six feet in the clear, at the outer end. 
The loft of the barn floor is closely laid with 
planks, with the exception of a six-foot open¬ 
ing through which the hay is to be taken up. 
The hay loft will bold 102 loads of clover hay. 
The hay for the horses and stock in the barn¬ 
yard is all thrown down on the barn-floor, 
thus saving waste; the hay for the stock in the 
closed shed is thrown down through a 2-foot 
opening left all around the outer edge of the 
loft right over the stanchions and rack. The 
barn floor is fully large enough to contain bed¬ 
ding for the horses, or to hold lambing ewes 
on sleety nights. It will be seen that the fight¬ 
ing or master calves can be stanchioned, 
and the others left free, so that nearly twice 
the number can be housed in the same space. 
There is a drop of one or two feet where the 
lean-to joins the mam building. This is a com¬ 
fortable and convenient barn, 1 thrnk, for a 
farm where 100 acres are annually cultivated. 
Any mechanic can readily make out a bill 
for the lumber. G. c. 
Montgomery County, Va. 
Cfoifdtimmi. 
“WHAT ARE AGRICULTURAL COL¬ 
LEGES GOOD FOR ? ” 
NO. II. 
PRKSIDENT W. I. CHAMBERLAIN. 
In my first article on this subject I said that 
Prof. Porter seemed to me to write without suf¬ 
ficient knowledge, or at least recognition, of 
the great difficulties which our agricultural 
colleges have to overcome. Let me mention 
a few of these. 
First comes the reluctance of farmers’ sons 
to study agriculture and of their fathers to 
have them do so. As President of a college 
that has 300 students in its four classes, 1 have 
a pretty good chance to observe. Except the 
engineers, all male students are required to 
take the equivalent of three lectures or reci¬ 
tations per week, the first two years of the 
course, in agriculture, including horticulture 
and stock-breeding. I am besieged with re¬ 
quests to excuse students from these studies 
and always refuse. I once nearly lost the 
good-will of a prominent trustee, a large 
farmer, by refusing to excuse his son from 
the class in stock-breeding. He didn’t like 
the book, written by one of our foremost 
live-stock writers. He didn’t like the teach¬ 
er, one of our own graduates, a man of much 
experience in fine stock-breeding. He said 
his son could study it as well at home, where 
the chief business was buying, feeding and 
handling steers. He wanted him to have Al¬ 
gebra, Geometry, Rhetoric, History, Latin 
and such like studies. I told him that, if I 
excused the son of the Chairman of the 
Trustees, (as he was then) I should establish a 
precedent that I must follow for every stu¬ 
dent that asked, and that would be a practi¬ 
cal abandonment of agricultural instruction, 
the very thing the college was endowed to 
give. This is one of many cases. The very 
farmers who shout that we are not agricul¬ 
tural enough, send their sons t classical col¬ 
leges, or if they send them here demand that 
they be excused from what we require of all 
in agriculture, horticulture and stock-breed¬ 
ing. Even among the pure and applied 
sciences those that squint most sharply to¬ 
wards agriculture, like Entomology, Struc¬ 
tural and Pathological Botany, Comparative 
Anatomy, etc., seem less popular with farm¬ 
ers’ sons than Calculus, Physics, Astronomy, 
Psychology, Political Science and the like. 
Quite a number of the present Senior Class 
have now a petition before the Faculty to 
take r German next term instead of lectures 
on Veterinary Medicine and Surgery, under 
one of the keenest, most interesting veteri¬ 
nary surgeons in the entire West. We have 
the farmers and their sons to convert. Even 
in the Michigan Agricultural College, for 
years the main trouble has been with the 
agricultural studies proper, and the field and 
garden practice. 
Now 1 mention these facts, not to urge that 
we should give up agricultural instruction, as 
Prof. Porter advises when he says: “If you 
cannot learn agriculture at a college, there 
are other things you can learn which will be 
even more important." No, that would be mis¬ 
use of trust funds. But I do mention them to 
show that Prof. Porter and others do not rec¬ 
ognize the odds against which we work, and 
to show that it is not true that “all who come 
here intend to be farmers,” and that the “ag¬ 
ricultural college takes them away from the 
farm ” The trouble lies further back, in the 
heresy, preached by Prof. Porter and believ¬ 
ed by most farmers, that the thorough scien¬ 
tific education given in an agricultural college 
will not make a man a better farmer if he fol¬ 
lows farming with zest; that “agricultural 
papers and reports of experiment stations tell 
farmers all they need to know about theoreti¬ 
cal and scientific matters appertaining to ag¬ 
riculture.” Acting on this heresy, the boy 
that is to be a farmer is kept at home and 
the boy that isn't to be a farmer is sent to an 
agricultural college to fit him to be something 
else! Aud acting on this idea, he and his father 
often insist that, so far as may be, he omit 
all studies that smack too much of the farm. 
Another thing closely related: Boys 
come from the farm to college to learn what 
they do not already know. They think they 
know all about farming, and hence don’t 
want to learn. Tnen, too, the deeds of deft¬ 
ness on the farm are going out as machinery 
comes in. It takes as much knack aud train¬ 
ing to mow a smooth swath, to cradle grain, 
rake and bind, shear sheep and chop wood, 
rapidly and skillfully, as it does to lay brick, 
case doors, plaster, paint or hang wall paper 
well, or run an engine-lathe or locomotive. 
Scythe-mowing is a lost art on the wide prair¬ 
ies. We can’t find a student who can do 
deftly these things of hand-knack, and if we 
should require here the drill needed to give 
deftness in these old hand processes, the stu¬ 
dents would leave college. They come to 
study science, underlying principles, as a rule, 
not farm processes. These so far as needed and 
as adapted to present tools and machinery, 
they get or should get at home. The differ¬ 
ence is not, as Prof. Porter says, that “ every¬ 
thing that can be called a profession or trade 
depends on scientific attainment or acquired 
skill; an apprenticeship of some kind must 
precede capable work in every kind of 
mechanical occupation,” and that this is not 
so in farming. The boys on the farm, as 
Prof. Porter says, get, or should get, knack, 
apprenticeship. They do not get underlying 
principles. These they can get at the col¬ 
lege, and these, I maintain, are as essential to 
the highest success in farming as in law, medi¬ 
cine and divinity. Farmers have nitherto 
not had this drill in principles, in related 
sciences, and hence have not ranked socially 
or in success with educated men in the pro¬ 
fessions or in business. 
One Thing More:— Scientific training in 
other callings gives foremanships and the po¬ 
sition and pay that come from the superin¬ 
tendence of labor. But from the youthful 
and crude condition of agriculture and agri¬ 
cultural colleges in this country, such payiug 
foremauships are not yet largely offered to 
graduates, as in Europe. But our agricul¬ 
tural college graduates are now finding many 
more such openings, in breeding establish¬ 
ments, and as experimenters in stations, and 
as instructors in colleges, in nurseries, green¬ 
houses, in management of country estates of 
rich men, in landscape gardening, etc. And 
to those who are at all wise, the partnerships 
in large fruit, grain and stock farms, be¬ 
tween the father with his business and farm 
experience, and the son with his scientific 
knowledge, should always bo most inviting 
ones. I know that the education given in the 
agricultural colleges of Michigan, Massachu¬ 
setts, New York, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, 
Kansas, Colorado, Iowa and other States 
makes the graduates better farmers and 
broader men, and that in nearly all the Land 
Grant colleges the instruction towards the 
mechanic industries has been admirable. 
Second: —I am to consider the wisdom of 
the changes proposed by Prof. Porter. H ; s 
plan is: “First, turn the agricultural colleges 
into schools of general culture, assimilating 
their courses of study largely to the academi¬ 
cal courses in regular colleges.” To this I am 
totally opposed, because, first, as already 
stated, I regard it as a clear diversion of trust 
funds from their true intent; second, be¬ 
cause I should regard it as a retrograde move. 
The old “academic course” was largely barren 
of results in science and the industries; and 
literature and the professions were compara¬ 
tively overstocked. Since our course of 
study was laid down in this college, 20 years 
ago, the “academic course” has, by the spirit 
of the age, been driven towards us tenfold 
more than we have been drawn towards it. 
And the great majority of the recent immense 
endowments have been for schools, colleges 
and universities of technology and practical 
and applied science, rather than for those that 
have the “regular academic course.” As Da¬ 
vid said of his child, so may the “regular 
colleges” say to the scientific and technologi¬ 
cal colleges; “We shall go to them, but they 
shall not return to us.” 
Prof. Porter’s second proposition is. 
“ But do not take the boys away from the 
farm even to learn these things. Let them 
understand that they can be just as much 
gentlemen, in the tru* sense, ou the farm as 
in other pursuits, and that culture is just as 
useful and just as ennobling there as else¬ 
where. To this end let the college course be 
arranged so as to consist of at least four to 
six-months’ winter terms, leaving the sum¬ 
mers eatire for other use*. The advantage of 
this arrangement would bo that the boy would 
not be taken away from the farm long enough 
to acquire a distaste for it and a disposition 
to lead au easy, effeminate and, as be thinks, 
gentlemanly life. In fact, he would not be 
taken from the farm at all. He would be 
there every summer, and all summer long, 
helping his father with the extra zsst and the 
acquired manliness that his winter’s oppor 
tunity had given him.” 
Bu t could you teach the boy as much of ag¬ 
riculture and related sciences in four months 
of winter? We here have eight months of 
summer for a purpose. To teach botany we 
want the plants in growth and bloom. To 
teach entomology we want to watch the bugs 
(insects) in their various stages of develop¬ 
ment, while they are developing; that is, in 
spring and summer, not winter. To teach 
the uses of insecticides and the modes of 
spraying, we need the students in summer 
when the coddling moth and the cabbage 
worm and chinch bug are abroad in the land. 
In short, the deductive, “cloister” studies 
that need only book and brain, like Latin 
Calculus and Mental and Political Philosophy, 
can be studied on Prof. Porter’s plan. The 
inductive and industrial sciences, that use ob¬ 
jects, field work, growth, development, man¬ 
ipulations, these things require in part the 
summer and the open air. 
Prof. Porter continues: 
“Thirdly. Turn the institutions now called 
agricultural colleges into farm schools and ex¬ 
periment stations during the summer. In 
these let every branch of agriculture be car¬ 
ried on and illustrated in the best possible 
manner, and let the work be done of prefer¬ 
ence, and, as far as possible, by young men 
who desire to become proficient in practical 
agriculture. Let these young men be paid as 
much as other men would be for the same a- 
mount of work.” 
This is good in part. It is just what the 
best of our agricultural colleges are now doing 
all summer, in connection with their regular 
instruction in underlying sciences. But this 
contradicts and subverts Prof. Porter’s idea 
of leaving the young man at home six or 
eight months of summer! But if these “farm 
schools” are to be carried on for illustration 
and instruction, I doubt the propriety of pay¬ 
ing the students for the instruction they re¬ 
ceive, as advised in the last sentence of the 
quotation. If they are working to make 
money for the college or the State, then pay 
them. If they are working to get instruction 
for themselves out of the experiments tried, 
then why pay them for receiving this know¬ 
ledge, any more than for experimenting in the 
chemical, botanical, physical or entomologic¬ 
al laboratory or dissecting room, or in milit¬ 
ary drill of the college campus? The moment 
you single out agricultural and horticultural 
experimentation, and pay the pupil tor what 
he learns there, and yet make him pay for 
material used in the chemical laboratory, that 
moment you degrade the agricultural experi¬ 
mentation into commercial farming, and 
make your student a common unskilled labor¬ 
er and not a learner. The student must be put 
where and at what he can learn most; the 
paid laborer must be put where aud at what 
he can earn most. 
It is a long and difficult task to lift farming 
from an illiberal labor to a liberal profession; 
to make it an applied science, a skilled art in¬ 
stead of an empirical drudgery. It will be 
long before the bulk of the farmers “ manure 
with brains.” Never will farmers rank 
socially and financially with those that have 
studied far more than they in their own line 
of work. They will not be induced to study 
underlying sciences by telling them, as Prof. 
Porter does, that “ the agricultural papers 
and reports of experiment stations tell them 
all they need to know about theoretical and 
scientific matters appertaining to agricul¬ 
ture.” As well burn theological seminaries 
and law schools and medical colleges and let 
young men of no education and no special 
training enter these professions trusting to the 
religious papers, and the law and medical 
journals to “ tell them all they need to know’’ 
about preaching, pleading and practicing. 
The agricultural colleges are trying to 
meet the problem as well as they caD. But it 
is new and untried work. The oldest of these 
colleges in this country Is but a trifle over 20 
years old; while the colleges that train for 
the learned professions and for literature have 
existed for centuries. It really does not seem 
to me that Prof. Porter has helped towards 
the solution of the problem. 
Agricultural College, Ames, Iowa. 
C»mjxo!)ax 
RURAL SPECIAL REPORTS. 
California. 
Pleasanton, Alameda County, June 5.— 
The Rural arrives regularly, and it gives 
me pleasure to say that the longer I keep it 
the more highly it is appreciated. Haying is 
nearly over, with a good crop on volunteer 
lands. The late rains damaged early cue to a 
considerable extent; but the prices for that 
cut later, will probably be low. Grain is rip¬ 
ening fast with the promise of a fair crop. 
Reports from other parts, are that the aphis 
did some damage to late-sown Chevalier bar¬ 
ley, which is the best-paying grain crop in 
this county. Prices rule low for all produce, 
excepting buckwheat. Fruits of all kinds are 
plentiful with the exception of Moorpark 
apricots and some varieties of peaches, which 
were affected by the curl-leaf. Land is held 
at very stiff prices, from 300 to 500 dollars 
per acre being asked for good valley lands. 
At that rate a man without* the necessary 
capital to buy outright, would have to work 
and slave a life-time to clear 150 acres. 
j. c. M. 
Delaware. 
Dover, Kent County, June 18.—We have 
had a vast amount of wet weather of late and 
the effect of it will be felt during the entire 
season, especially in sections where the land 
is low and wet. Harvest commenced yester¬ 
day, but the bulk of the crops will not be cut 
till later in the week or probably next. Wheat 
on high land is apparently a fine crop, but 
much has been hurt by water. Some com¬ 
plaints of scab or blight are made, but I think 
the trouble is not bad enough to affect the 
crop. We are behindhand in haying. Last 
week was the proper time for cutting clover, 
but none was cut on account of the weather, 
and the present prospect is that this week 
will be but little better. Anyway the wheat 
must be attended to oven if hay is neglected. 
We have had but little hot weather but au 
unusual number of thunder storms. Some 
damage has been done by lightning. Corn 
looks fairly well on high land, but on low land 
there has been so little time dry enough to 
work it that the weeds are about to take the 
lead. Some of us on high land are cultivat¬ 
ing our corn for the third or fourth time 
while the crop is from one foot to three high; 
but this does not apply to half of the crop in 
the county. Some few fields of oats look flue, 
but the greater part of the acreage sown looks 
injured by too much wet. Strawberries wore 
a fine crop, but growers realized very poor 
returns for them. So far as this section is 
concerned, the peach crop will be very light; 
but a full crop is reported farther down the 
State. The rose bugs have been here in count¬ 
less multitudes destroying about all of the 
grapes and not a few peaches aud apples. 
Early truck is plentiful, and potatoes are 
large enough for use. The hay crop, even if 
housed in good shape, will not be up to the 
average. What we most want at present is 
good weather for a week or so; otherwise 
many a farmer will meet with serious losses. 
a. G. s. 
IlltnoU. 
Dixon, Lee]County, June 17.- -Farmers here¬ 
abouts were invited by the Anglo-Swiss Con¬ 
densed Milk Company, of this town, to as¬ 
semble on June 1, aud make and sign con¬ 
tracts for milk for the year, and the period 
for doing so expired ou June 15. The con¬ 
tacts were to run four months. The prices 
for milk were to be on a basis of 90 cents per 
