Repository: UIHistories Project: Course Catalog - 1876-1877 [PAGE 25]

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College of Agriculture.

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the common school branches and in the studies of the preliminaryyear (see page 22). While by law, students may be admitted at fifteen years of age, in general it is much better that they shall be eighteen or twenty. It will be well if candidates shall have pursued other studies, besides those required for admission. The better the preparation the more profitable the course.

SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE.

OBJECT OP THE SCHOOL.

The aim of this school is to educate scientific agriculturists. The frequency with which this aim is misunderstood by the community at large, 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. The 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. But all of this implies a gross misunderstanding of the real object of agricultural science. It 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. It is not simply to teach how to feed, but 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 and profoundly, 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 "book farming," but a knowledge of the real nature of all true farming—of the great natural laws of the farm and of all of its phenomena—this is the true aim of agricultural education. And when it is recollected that agriculture involves a larger number of sciences than any other human employment or profession, it will not be regarded as an unfit end of a sound collegiate training. It has been the steady aim to give to the College of Agriculture the largest development practicable, and to meet the full demand of the country for Agricultural education, as fast as it shall arise. Agricultural students are specially invited. Boards of Agriculture, and Agricultural Associations, State and County, are invited to co-operate with the University in its efforts to awaken a more direct appreciation of the value of education, and to add, by the establishment of scholarships or other means, to the number of those who avail themselves of its facilities for instruction.