Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1878 [PAGE 127]

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127

COLLEGE OP AGRICULTURE.

FACULTY. The REGENT,

Professor MORROW, Dean.

Professor BURRILL, Doctor F . W . P R E N T I C E ,

C. I. H A Y S , SCOYELL.

Professor SHATTUCK, Professor T A F T , Professor W E B E R ,

M. A.

SCHOOLS.

School of Agriculture.

School of Horticulture.

SCHOOL O F A G R I C U L T U R E .

OBJECT OF T H E SCHOOL.

The aim of this school is to educate scientific agriculturists. The frequency with which this aim is misunderstood, demands that it shall be fully explained. Many who look upon agriculture as consisting merely in the manual work of plowing, planting, cultivating and harvesting, and in the care of stock, justly ridicule the idea of teaching these arts in a college. T h e practical farmer who has spent his life in farm labors, laughs at the notion of sending his son to learn these from a set of scientific professors. B u t all this implies a gross misunderstanding of the real object of agricultural science. I t is not simply to teach how to plow, but the reason for plowing at all—to teach the composition and nature of soils, the philosophy of plowing, of manures, and the adaptation of the different soils to different crops and cultures. I t is not simply to teach how to feed, b u t to show the composition, action and value of the several kinds of food, and the laws of feeding, fattening, and healthful growth. In short, it is the aim of the true agricultural college to enable the student to understand thoroughly, all that man can know about soils and seeds, plants and animals, and the influences of light, heat and moisture on his fields, his crops, and his stock ; so that he may both understand the reason of the processes he uses, and may intelligently work for the improvement of those processes. Not " b o o k farming," but a knowledge of the real nature of all true farming—of the great natural laws of the farm and its phenomena—this is the true aim of agricultural education. Agriculture involves a larger number of sciences than any other human employment, and cannot be regarded as an unfit end of a sound collegiate training. The steady aim of the trustees has been to give to the college of agriculture the largest development practicable, and to meet the full demand for agricultural education, as fast as it shall arise. Agricultural students are especially invited to the University.