Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 429]

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888

History University of Illinois

To facilitate the increase and practical application and diffusion of knowledge, the professors should conduct, each in his own department, a continued scries of annual experiments. For example, let twenty or more acres of each variety of grain, (each acre accurately measured,) be annually sown, with some practical variation on each acre, as regards the quality and preparation of the soil, the kind and quantity of seed, the time and mode of sowing or planting, the time and modes and processes of cultivation and harvesting, and an accurate account kept of all costs, labor, &c., and of the final results. Let analogous experiments be tried on all the varied products of the farm, the fruit yard, the nursery, and the garden; on all modes of crossing, rearing and fattening domestic animals, under various degrees of warmth and of light, with and without shelter; on green, dry, raw, ground, and cooked food, cold and warm; on the nature, causes; and cure of their various diseases, both of those on the premises and of those brought in from abroad, and advice given, and annual reports made on those and all similar topics. Let the professors of physiology and entomology be ever abroad at the proper seasons, with the needful apparatus for seeing all things visible and invisible, and scrutinizing the latent causes of all those blights, blasts, rots, rusts and mildews which so often destroy the choicest products of industry, and thereby impair the health, wealth, and comfort of millions of our fellow men. Let the professor of chemistry carefully analyze the various soils and products of the State, retain specimens, give instruction, and report on their various qualities, adaptations, and deficiencies. Let similar experiments be made in all other interests of agriculture and mechanic or chemical art, mining, merchandize and transportation by water and by land, and daily practical and experimental instruction given to each student in attendance in his own chosen sphere of research or labor in life. Especially let the comparative merits of all labor saving tools, instruments, machines, engines and processes, be thoroughly and practically tested and explained, so that their benefits might be at once enjoyed, or the expense of their cost avoided by the unskillful and unwary.