farm is excellently adapted to grass, and to all the various crops usually raised in the State.

No manures have been applied, except plaster, and that which is made upon the farm; and of this last, much has heretofore been given to the Horticultural Department of the College.

It will be seen that the Farm is one well calculated for purposes of instruction, being adapted to mixed husbandry, and having so unusual a diversity of soil. It was selected on account of this last characteristic: a good bridge joins the two portions of the Farm.

HORTICULTURAL DEPARTMENT.

This is under the charge of Prof. Prentiss, a graduate of the College, and now Professor of Botany and Horticulture. This Department has several Divisions.

Apple Orchard-To the 250 thrifty trees which composed this orchard, there were added this season 121 more from the College Nursery, which has been used for giving instruction in grafting and in early management of the trees. The orchard

will be enlarged in the Spring, from the same source.

Pear Orchard-Of 90 standard pear trees, representing 22 varieties, and 100 dwarf pear trees, representing 36 varieties, is doing well.

Vegetable Garden-Has always been a credit to the Institution. A large variety of plants are raised-sometimes as many as 300 varieties in a single year.

Fruit Garden-Is not extensive. It has dwarf apples, crab apples, cherries, pears, currants, gooseberries, blackberries, grapes, a fine large bed of strawberries, a currant orchard of 278 plants, nursery of 172 apple trees, 476 young evergreens, &c.

Lawn, Park, and Flower Borders-Cover about 9 acres. The grounds and borders were very beautiful the last season. Through the generosity of Prof. Asa Grey, of Harvard University, of Isaac Buchanan, florist, of New York, of Thomas

Hogg & Sons, Yorkville, N. Y., and of many others, the College is possessed of a variety of beautiful flowering shrubs, bedding plants, &c.

The Horticultural Department is managed in the interest of the education of the students.

LABOR SYSTEM.

More of the inquiries made of us relate to the labor system than perhaps to any other feature of the College. Objections to it come oftenest from those who are disposed to connect the Agricultural College of the State from which the inquiries come, with some existing College. In this College all students work three hours daily.

Who established this system? The Legislature of the State. The law organizing the College in 1855, and the law reörganizing the College in 1861 both require about 3 hours labor daily of each student.

Do educational men indorse the labor system? We believe they do.

In the Ky. Agricultural College, and in Iowa Agricultural College, the labor system is introduced. A Report on the Agricultural College of Maine, submitted to the Maine Board of Agriculture, says: " Of American Schools, the Agricultural College of Michigan is, perhaps the best model;" but adds that we ought to require as many as four or six hours of labor daily, and the Secretary of the Board, Hon. S. L. Goodale, endorses the requirement of labor. We are informed there is no hesitation about adopting the system in that State.

In Massachusetts, Edward Hitchcock, President of Amherst, made a report on Agricultural Colleges in 1850. After endeavoring, at some length, to show that Agricultural Colleges should not be connected with other institutions; he says of students: "They would learn, also, how to labor with their own hands, for I take it such a requisition would be indispensible in these schools."-Mass. House Doc., No. 13, Jan., 1851, p. 76.

In 1863, Dr. E. O. Haven, the present President of the University of Michigan, was member of the Massachusetts State Senate, and Chairman of the Joint Special Committee, on the Agricultural College. His report argues against the uniting of the Agricultural College with any other institution, and contains a report of a sub committee, expressing the opinion "that it (the College,) should recognize the principle of daily manual labor by its students, as essential to success." Not a word is said in the report, of any other plan, while the law proposed by this committee provides for a farm of at least 100 acres, and that the Board of Trustees of the College should "make such provision for the manual labor of the students on said farm, as they may deem just and reasonable.

The Hon. Henry F. French, after being elected President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, visited the Michigan College, and wrote back to the "Ploughman," of Boston, that "the great problem of uniting labor and study, is being very successfully worked out at this Institution;" and in the plan of organization submitted to the Legislature of Massachusetts, in Jan., 1866, by Pres. French, in behalf of the Trustees, "manual labor to be required daily of every student," is expressly mentioned. (pp. 13.)

John A. Porter presented in 1856, while Professor of Agricultural Chemistry in Yale College, "a plan for an Agricultural School," in which, although he does not specify who are to do the labor on it, he gives as the first requisite, "a well stocked and well furnished farm."

Hon. S. B. Johnson, Secretary of the New York State Agricultural Society, under whose care the valuable volumes of the Society's transactions are yearly issued, says "I am inclined to the opinion that they [Agricultural Colleges] should be seperate from other schools, and the pupils be made real practical farmers, as well as scientific. This of course would require labor on the farm in summer.”

Such extracts might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Nearly all agricultural papers, and Agricultural Boards and

Societies, so far as any expressions of theirs on the subject have come to our notice, agree as to the necessity of the labor system.

What is the labor system at the Michigan Agricultural College? 1st. All students labor, except from physical disability. There is consequently no caste in the College.

2d. The regular hours of labor are from half past one to half past four each afternoon, Saturdays excepted, on which day labor is furnished only on request. Until a few years past the students were arranged in three divisions, the first division going to their work immediately after breakfast, being succeeded by a second at the end of three hours, and by the third in the afternoon. By this means the teams were kept employed by the students, and the expense of hiring hands to a good degree obviated. The objection to the plan was that the labor could not be made so educational to the students as when working in one division.

3. The professors and foremen work with the students, or personally superintend the work. The Professor of Agriculture and the Professor of Horticulture, and the foreman of the farm, a graduate of the College, are in the field with the students during the whole of the regular working hours.

4. The labor is intimately connected with the subjects of their lectures and lessons. The principles learned from books find their illustration in the field or work-shop, and on the other hand, what students observe while at labor, stimulates them to the investigation of principles.

5. The Sophomores work the entire year with the Professor of Horticulture; the Juniors, the entire year with the Professor of Practical Agriculture. To others are assigned special duties, such as ringing the bell, the care of Library and Museum, assistance to the Secretary of the College, &c. The rest of the students are divided from an alphabetical list, into three equal portions, two of which are assigned to the Farm Department, and one to the Horticultural Department, for their labor. A new assignment is made every fortnight.

Does the labor make the student a skilled workman? It tends to do so. The student who sees a body dissected, under the skillful hands of a professor of anatomy, does not become by that sight an accomplished anatomist, but he has learned anatomy in a way that books and lectures alone can not teach him. The student in geology does not think a cabinet of geological specimens useless to him because it has not made him at once competent to conduct a geological survey. To labor upon the farm and gardens, and about the stock, &c., gives the student some practice in various kinds of work, although not always, nor perhaps generally, sufficient to give him very great skill in it. But he sees the principles he has been learning illustrated. The operations of farming, horticulture, &c., are before his eyes for four years, and he cannot help acquiring some valuable familiarity with the details of farming and horticultural operations. He may have to set a tire upon a wheel, or graft fruit, or hang a gate, or set posts in balloon frames, or manage the drill machine, but once or twice in his college course; but these things are constantly done and talked about and lectured upon in his sight and hearing, while other and more common operations fall oftener to his hand.

Do students do their work as well as hired men do? Much of it has not been done so well as hired men would do it. Some of the students are but boys. Some of them are entirely unaccustomed to work when they come. On the other hand we have been able to have much work done well that ordinary hands cannot do at all. Surveying, leveling, platting, are such. Besides, we always find some among the students more competent to be left in charge of certain labors connected with farming, horticultural experiments, the stock, &c., than any we can hire. Moreover, the labor is succeeding better every year. As more of it is done in gangs, working with the Professors, as it becomes more interesting from connection with the lectures delivered the work grows better, and the results of the system, both educationally and otherwise, are more satisfactory. The average age of our students is greater than it was during