Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Powell) [PAGE 505]

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464

History University of Illinois

It is equally important to comprehend the physiology generally of the vegetable kingdom, and afterwards the pathological condition, caused by chemical changes, effects of light, heat, electricity and other natural causes. We beg leave to impress the truth that our county, in a geographical position, north and south, and east and west, offers the very best facilities for such investigation. Being central between the northern and southern extremity of a State, whose latitude, and climate, and geological features, conduce to the growth of such families of plants that on the one hand are tending to the tropical, and on the other more carbonaceous in their elements, and of the more torrid or southern in nature—we are enabled to comprehend them both in our field of scientific research. We also beg leave to suggest that we are in a region of country comparatively new comprehending nearly half the eastern half of the state, with soil unsurpassed in fertility, at prices within the reach of those aiming to avail themselves of advantages compatible with our agricultural tastes and enterprise, while the north, the west and the southwest portions are amply supplied. For the want of such inducements to invite in immigrants, our vast grand prairie is yet sparsely settled. Once grant to this eastern part of the State the patronage of the treasury, and the immigration it will entice here, will amply reward in revenue and scientific toil, all that may be expended. Situated, too, as we are, upon the branch of the Illinois Central Railroad, where a college of that character must become a valuable beneficiary to that road, and thru1 it to the State, we suggest that it is not inappropriate to ask that a portion of the 7% fund arising from the road, be set apart for that purpose, thus reflecting back for the future encouragement of that gigantic enterprise a generous part of her own earnings.— We also suggest that we have in process of erection an edifice of 124 by 118 ft, five stories high, estimated at $80,000 located between Urbana and Champaign on some eight or ten acres of land, designed to comprise an agricultural department, which the stockholders propose to donate to the State, for the consideration that they sustain in it an institution characterized as abov0| and further say that should your honorable body deem it not politic to receive the building and conduct the school as aforesaid, wholly