Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 314]

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306 mately related as a branch of Tale College, and the new school of Harvard will be united with the Harvard College. As to the School of Technology, it is singularly associated, I think. I don't know how that is ; but the Scientific School there, at any rate, is a branch. And I suppose that I threw out the suggestion simply because it might aid myself and the pther officers of the association to act in the matter of permanent organization, to have the point drawn out in discussion. It is possible it might be well for the Convention to go on a missionary up to the old National Association. Mr. Folwell—There seems to be an understanding that there is a concession on our part, that we have interests that are adverse to other educators. We have no such interests. The President—I do not understand it that way, nor do I think the others understand it so. Mr. McAffee—It seems to me there is a very great call for an organization in the direction of the call that we have heard read here, and that we all have seen before. There is certainly a special call for an organization in the direction of unity of experiment among the institutions. There are, no doubt, great interests involved in respect to the institutions, aside from that; but here is the special matter—the matter of experimentation. We are seeking for knowledge by experiment ; we are trying to make agriculture, which is accumulative science now, accumulation of distinct facts. To organize these facts, which we can do faster and better by these experiments, it seems to me eminently proper, and eminently fit that we should organize those who are connected in any way, remote or direct, with those experiments— organize them in such a way that there may be a community of the work. I think it is possible; and I think we can come together on that subject, and after that question has been decided, we can organize an association for experiment there. Then, if it should become necessary to go further and organize for the purpose of meeting to discuss questions of the land grant, school management, etc., it might be well to include that in the organization. There is this one point that seems to have peculiar force and a peculiar meaning to my mind, perhaps because I am intimately connected with experiments—that there should be an organization in the direction of a community of experiments. Mr. Flagg—I assent very heartily to the remarks of the gentleman who has just sat down. I think as he does, that while the primary object of this organization should be the accumulation of agricultural knowledge particularly, that it ought to be the feeling of us who are engaged more particularly in that work, and that we very earnestly