AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. 
405 
are determined bj the administration of the school, provides 
food for all at fixed and moderate prices. 
The courses of study, conducted by eighteen able professors, 
embrace instruction in the following general departments, to 
wit: agriculture, zootechny, veterinary science and art, rural 
constructions, civil engineering, sylviculture, agricultural and 
forest technology, and rural and political economy. 
Auxiliaries, including a valuable special library, an agricul¬ 
tural museum, a cabinet of physical technology, collections of 
models of apparatus*^ and agricultural and forestal machines, 
zoological, botanical, and rninerological cabinets, dendrolog- 
ical collections of much interest, an immense chemical labora¬ 
tory, and a large farm, are provided with a liberality worthy 
of the great empire. 
The farm comprises about twelve hundred acres, of which 
between eight and nine hundred is arable land and the 
remainder forest, and is already provided with a nursery, fruit, 
kitchen, and botanical gardens, with a dairy, wagon-houses 
and well-equipped establishments for implements of every 
kind, and with well-arranged barns for grain and domestic 
animals. 
The academy confers two degrees, that of bachelor and that 
of master. In order to secure the first, the student must pass 
an examination in all the sciences taught, whether they relate 
to agriculture or to forestry, and present to the council a scien¬ 
tific memoir upon a given subject. To obtain the degree of 
master, the applicant must present his diploma of bachelor, 
undergo a second examination, and publicly defend a thesis 
on some relevant subject. 
The number of students attending this great institution in 
1866 was four hundred and fifty, of whom eighty-five received 
in addition to free tuition, bursaries of some $20 each. But 
all this magnificent array of forces and material, with a pat¬ 
ronage approached by no other institution of like charac¬ 
ter in the world, does not adequately illustrate the spirit and 
energy with which the government is pushing forward the 
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noble work of educating the agricultural classes. The pres- 
