Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1876 [PAGE 36]

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36 diagrams, drawings, etc. The school is well supplied with compound microscopes and apparatus, and students have abundant opportunity to learn their use, and to make practical investigations with them. The herbarium is rich in specimens of useful and noxious plants, including many of the fungous parasites which cause disease to cultivated crops. Upon the grounds devoted to the use of the school there are : 1. A very large specimen apple orchard planted in 1869, containing above 1000 varieties,—many varieties of pears, cherries, grapes and small fruits. 2. A nursery of young trees, in which students have regular work in propagation, etc. 3. A forest-tree plantation embracing the most useful kinds for timber. 4. An arboretum in which all hardy indigenous and exotic trees are planted as fast as they can be secured, and now containing nearly 100 varieties. The ornamental grounds, which surround the University building embrace about twenty acres, and are kept in a neat and attractive style. These, with all the adjuncts, of trees and flowering, shrubs, lawn and beds of flowers and foliage plants, walks of different material and styles of laying out, give illustration to the class-room work in landscape gardening. A large green-house contains a collection of plants of great value for the classes in floriculture and landscape gardening, besides furnishing students with practice in all the details of hot-house and green-house management. The large library contains the best literature upon these subjects.

TECHNICAL STUDIES.

These include the first study mentioned in each term of the Horticultural course, together with General Horticulture of the second year and Laboratory work of the fourth year,—in all fourteen studies. Candidates for graduation from this course must pass satisfactory examinations in all of these studies, no others being accepted as substitutes ; but students not proposing to graduate as Horticulturists may choose any part of these as of other studies. For Agricultural Chemistry see School of Chemistry. General Horticulture occupies fourteen weeks, and is intended as an introduction to the subjects which are presented in a comprehensive manner afterward, and to give the most possible information in regard to cultivated trees, fruits, vegetables, and flowers in the time devoted to it. The term's work is, therefore, well adapted to the requirements of general students and of those who have only a limited time at their disposal; instruction is mainly by lectures illustrated by specimens and drawings. The following topics are discussed: Orchard Sites, the Age of Trees to Plant, the Season to Plant, How to Plant, What to Plant, the Management of the Soil, Pruning and Care of Trees, Gathering and Preserving Fruit, Diseases and Injuries, the Nursery, Ornamental Trees and Shrubs, Flower' Gardens, Vegetable Gardens, including Propagating Beds and Houses, the Vineyard and Small Fruits, and Timber Tree Plantations. Students have instruction and practice in grafting, budding, propagation by cuttings, etc. Each student has usually grafted from two hundred to one thousand root-grafts of apples. Pomology and Forestry are studied fourteen weeks. Much of the first half of the term is spent in the orchards, nurseries and forests,