as common soldiers, but to be commanders; and so we should teach our students, inspiring them with high thoughts of their profession, and teaching them that in agriculture as in everything else, knowledge is power and money too.

"For just experience tells in every soil,

That those that think must govern those that toil."

In Industrial Schools purely it might be well to teach the science of agriculture, and have a model farm to apply scientific truths by the labor of young men as a means to their education. But as far as our knowledge goes these manual-labor systems have failed. In connection with a University, where every pupil should be placed upon an equal footing, and where there is always a discrimination in favor of knowledge as against labor, the scheme is Utopian to the last degree. Here I am well satisfied that the higher truths of Agricultural Science should be taught the student, and let him go out into the world and reap the practical benefit from his own observations; just like the physician, who soon learns to apply the science when he begins to practice the art, and often has to unlearn what was taught him at clinical lectures in city hospitals, because the circumstances surrounding the broken-down, ill-fed patients were abnormal.

Baron Liebig has well said, "You must teach the Science of Agriculture as purely, that is, with as little reference to application as the science of geometry or trigonometry is taught." And he says further, "The agricultural department of a college without an experimental station is simply nonsense. The only method by which you can possibly advance and develop agriculture is by experiments; that is the only plan, for there is no branch of industry so completely built up by experiments as agriculture."

When an Agricultural Professor has succeeded in convincing his students and his confreres that agriculture is a science, of high order, not pure and unmixed like mathematics, but a comprehensive system of Natural Science, so complex that it is difficult to acquire; so profound that it challenges the homage of the most gifted minds, he has surmounted perhaps the greatest barrier to success. For the fact cannot be disguised that many are impressed, especially young and unthinking minds, with the idea that agriculture is hardly respectable enough to be introduced as a regular course in a college curriculum. Not only students, but learned Professors who teach from the musty tomes of classical lore handed down for ages, are apt to be impressed with the idea of their superiority over the man who has no higher calling than to teach the whys and wherefores of making bread and meat. Added to this fact all other teaching looks to the acquisition of some profession or pursuit in life, while it is a fact, up to this present hour, that agriculture is not an occupation to be sought for by students at college, or to be taught only by apprenticeship as an art, lower in the scale than the very simplest mechanical arts. Not respectable! Why, agriculture has to do with all three of the kingdoms of nature, the vegetable, the mineral, and the animal. It opens to the view of the admiring student the anatomy and physiology of plants. It unlocks the great storehouse of meteorology, "the treasures of the snow and hail; how

the light is parted which scattereth the east wind upon the earth, and the way of the lightning of thunder, to cause it to rain on the earth, to satisfy the desolate and waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth." It imparts a thorough knowledge of soils, geologically and agriculturally, the relations of heat and moisture to vegetable growth, the capillary and hygroscopic power of soils, both as to gases and fluids, their relations to all organic and inorganic substances existing in or above them. Intimately associated with this is the chemistry of the atmosphere, the relation of its oxygen, nitrogen, ozone, and carbonic acid to plant life. The chemistry of soils, the mineral and organic elements of plants, and their forms and combinations in soils and products, and growing out of this the great laws that govern vegetable nutrition, embracing a scientific knowledge of fertilizers and natural manures. It also teaches the laws that govern animal nutrition; how plants organize food from minerals and gases, converting them into carbo-hydrates, oils, and albuminoids, to develop the animal heat, fat, bone, and muscle of all domestic animals as well as of man himself. And then, it takes up special agricultural plants and field crops, peculiar to each State and every climate and soil, and tells of their botanical relations and habitudes, the diseases to which they are subject, and the insects which prey upon them, or upon each other for their benefit; thus opening up the relations of agriculture to the science of entomology.

All of these and many points not even touched upon here are embraced in a thorough course of scientific agriculture; so that he who teaches it must be a learned man, and he who learns it must be a hard student, and possess intellectual powers capable of grasping the most abstruse problems, and a wisdom to apply to economical uses what he has learned for the benefit of his fellow-man.

But we are met with the objection, where will so many scientists find employment, if we are not to teach men to do farm work at these institutions? From present indications it does not appear that there will be more to graduate with honor than will fill the high positions now offering on every hand to the learned agriculturist. Some are demanded as Editors of our Agricultural Journals, some as commissioners in our Agricultural bureaus, and others as professors in our Industrial colleges, while not a few will become the owners and directors of our large landed estates, or, having less means, head the squads on our smaller farms with strong arms and willing minds, by not only directing the labor and inculcating the principles they have been taught, but by setting the example of industry to their laborers, and thus become thrifty and independent. Out of more than two hundred students who have attended our course for the last four years, not more than three per cent could ever aspire to become eminent scientific agriculturists. A number of others will be able to make leading men in their neighborhoods, and disseminate many agricultural truths they have acquired, for the benefit of the masses; others not availing themselves of the golden opportunities offered them or from natural incapacity will have to be reduced to the ranks in some one of the vocations of life.

It may not be amiss to mention a few of the great problems to be worked

out in this department of experimental science, bearing directly upon the great question of food and clothing for the human race.

It is known that nitrogen is the only organic element exhausted from soils in its available forms, and needed to be applied for their restoration. It is known that this element constitutes four-fifths of the atmosphere, and all soils, even the most barren, contain enough of it within the depth of twelve inches to make several hundred crops. But because this element exists in unavailable forms, the product of the soil diminishes annually until the farmer has to turn them out to cultivate new lands, or buy nitrogen from the Pacific isles or the waste of our cities to restore his soils. The problem is, how may the nitrogen of the atmosphere be made to unite with oxygen or hydrogen, by some cheap process, so as to be made available as plant food, or how may the organic nitrogen of the soil existing so abundantly be thus changed to accomplish the same beneficent purpose.

Another problem in reference to the same element: It is known that the nitrogen which the cereals take up from the soil, is converted by plants into what we term albuminoids or flesh formers, and when eaten as food, is converted into flesh, which is constantly undergoing transformation; the food supplying new nitrogen, the muscles throwing off the old, which is carried out of the system in three forms, viz: urea, hippuric, and uric acids. It is further known that these substances readily decompose in a short time, the nitrogen uniting with the hydrogen, forming ammonia; which being volatile, unites with the carbonic acid of the atmosphere and escapes into the upper regions. The problem is, "How can these substances be saved and utilized economically for the use of man, and thus prevent a waste of millions of pounds of nitrogen from every city and farm-yard in the land?" Similar problems might be stated in reference to all the important minerals entering into plants, especially phosphoric acid, the first mineral element exhausted from soils, the sparest of all the important elements, the one needed most for the seeds of all plants and the one which, more readily than any other, passes into insoluble and unavailable forms; and so of potash, magnesia, iron, sulphur, and all plant constituents. There are questions of magnitude constantly rising, which it is expected of our Agricultural professors to solve for the benefit of the cultivators of the soil.

The great discovery of Liebig, that soluble bi-phosphate of lime was the special form needed by plants, has had more to do with the success of agriculture, both in England and America, than perhaps all others combined. Every superphosphate manufactory in the civilized world stands as a monument to his memory, and the capital invested in them, do perpetual homage to his genius.

In this connection, we can but notice how much is being saved annually by the cotton planters of the South from the recent improvements in Agricultural science, based upon this great discovery of Liebig's.

At our Experimental station, it has been established, that on the worn soils of Middle Georgia (Eozoic formation) the application of five dollars worth of nitrogen and phosphoric acid in available forms, will increase the production of cotton one hundred per cent, for three years, over the

natural soil, without a re-application; thus saving half the labor in the cultivation of this great staple. It is the application of such scientific truths to the soils of Georgia that enables her to compete successfully with the rich lands of the West in the production of cotton, and has placed her the highest, by odds, of all the States, in the purchase and use of fertilizers.

When it is remembered that agriculture is the basis of all human soci ety, the sustenance of all human life; that without it the trade of the artisan, the navigator, the manufacturer, and every other profession and calling in life would utterly fail; that twelve hundred millions of human beings depend upon it for their daily sustenance; that nine-tenths of the fixed capital of all civilized people is embarked in it, and more than two hundred millions of men are daily laboring with brain and muscle in its interests, is it not wonderful that the learned and the great have been so slow to acknowledge its importance, and to provide means for the development of its truths, while millions are expended in other and less important systems of education, many of which result in as little real benefit to mankind as did the struggle of the alchemists for the philosopher's

stone.

Having thus consumed the time allotted us in the presentation of our views on this important subject, we must close hoping that they may elicit from others a candid hearing, especially from those who, having pursued a different policy, have utterly failed of success. We feel safe in announcing to-day that these principles are working successfully, at least in one of the institutions of the country, and we doubt not will accomplish the same result in every instance, with men to enforce them who are equal to the emergency, and "in whose vocabulary there is no such word as fail."

Owing to the lateness of the hour, discussion on this subject was postponed and the following business transacted.

It was moved and carried that this Department meet to-morrow at the close of the morning session of the General Association instead of at three o'clock as to-day.

Mrs. E. S. CARR, chairman of committee on nomination of officers reported as follows:

For President, MANLY MILES, Illinois Industrial University.
For Vice-President, E. M. PENDLETON, University of Georgia.
For Secretary, CHAS. Y. LACY, University of Minnesota.

The meeting directed the secretary to cast the ballot for the above named officers, which was accordingly done and they were declared elected.

A resolution of thanks to Pres. THOMPSON for his ability and faithfulness as a presiding officer was then passed unanimously, the vote being put by Prof. MILES.

Pres. THOMPSON thanked the Department for its expression of appreciation and then surrendered the chair to Prof. MILES.

Prof. MILES on taking the chair thanked the Department for the honor conferred and congratulated it on the high degree of success already attending it.

The Department then adjourned to meet at the close of the session of the General Association to-morrow morning.

Third Day's Proceedings.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 12th, 1876.

Meeting called to order pursuant to adjournment at the close of the morning session of the General Association, and the order of the programme proceeded with.

Mr. C. B. STETSON of Boston, Mass., read his paper which was as follows:

DRAWING AS AN ELEMENT OF ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

The demand for advanced industrial education, which has grown rapidly of late years, must continue to grow for years to come, in every department of human industry. This is evident from the general tendency of civilization, from the fact that brain is counting for more and more, while brawn is counting for less and less, in nearly every kind of labor.The construction of buildings, of machinery, of ships, and of bridges, the working of mines and the cultivation of the soil, and all the better class of manufactures call for a liberal education of its kind, no less than do law, medicine, and theology. The call, it may be repeated, is already urgent for large numbers possessing what may be vaguely termed advanced industrial education. What is this? The present paper proposes to discuss one of its chief elements.

Whether we consider the technical instruction required by men, or by women, for success in industrial pursuits, we shall find drawing to be the most essential single element of such instruction in all its grades,-the lowest and the highest. The truth of this assertion any one can substantiate for himself, by personal inquiries among the more intelligent of the men and women engaged in the different industries, and by reading the official reports of the various commissioners which have been appointed from time to time during the last twenty-five years, by European governments, to investigate the subject of technical instruction. It is true that a knowledge of chemistry, for example, will be found more essential in some employments than a knowledge of drawing; yet when the different employments are taken as a whole, it will be at once seen that