ture here, by branch institutions, or by appropriations of portion of the funds for the purpose of making experiments in other sections of the State. In the first place, the work to be done within its own boun-daries is but just begun. The best efforts of the officers, of all interested, and of the State itself, should be given to making the College as a unit and its limited undertaking to be perfectly successful, established in its workings and fruitful of acknowledged good to the State. The State has accepted the Congressional grant for the endowment of such a College, other States by like acceptance are awake to the subject of agricultural schools; the honor and interest of the State both require that we shall establish one institution in a sure prosperity before entering into other untried ways that prove always so costly and long in maturing. Again, the money is not on hand with which to undertake more than is now contemplated. All that the State will willingly appropriate, will at most be but sufficient to make the farm and buildings such as the present needs of the Institution require. The entire fund that can be realized from the sale of swamplands and the Congressional grant will be no large endowment for a College of this kind. It is doubtful whether the lands can be sold at a minimum of $2 50 per acre, as fixed by law. Should the 240,000 acres be sold at $1 25 per acre, and the fund draw interest at 5 per cent., which may not perhaps be remote from the result, the fund would grant the College a yearly income of only $15,000. It is not probable that the income will exceed $20,000 from all sources. The whole of this might be expended in a school for instruction in the mechanic arts, and still be insufficient. It would not support a firstclass military school. The Congressional appropriation for the support of the United States Military Academy for 1865 is more than $200,000, of which but a small part can go to feed and clothe the students. The entire fund will but make a respectable school of agriculture, with its accompanying mili tary department, where, in teaching the sciences on which these arts depend, the principles and various applications per taining to other arts will naturally have place. NUMBER OF STUDENTS. The number of students has not been large, as the catalogue will show. They have enjoyed excellent health, have been unusually regular in attendance, and have manifested unusual interest in the more purely professional objects of the School. The number might have been largely increased at the middle of the term, had we been willing to create new classes of an academic nature. But the Faculty could not bring themselves to believe that the difference between sixty and one hundred students, was so important as the work of developing the professional character of the College, in accordance with the plans of operations, laid down in the Report of the Board for the year 1863, and of the document to be found on the 45th page appended to the same Report. The war, and the consequent scarcity of labor, would naturally affect a College of this kind, more than it would most other Educational Intitutions. Medical Schools, on account of the great demands of the army, would find this to be their harvest time. Young men, aspiring to the professions of law and divinity, would, unless actually in the service of the Country, be found, as heretofore, in the professional school, or in the College, because that is the only way to the positions they seek. Young men of the cities and larger villages, who have means and leisure, will be found in the usual proportions in the Academies and Colleges, pursuing a course of general education, preparatory to the choice of vocations for life. But the farmer's son has no leisure, however ample his means; neither is an education indispensable to the usual measure of success in his business. The desire to possess an education peculiarly adapted to the farmer's life, is to be created; and to do that work, it is necessary that the College should possess superior means of illustration, in matters pertaining to the management 116 REPORT OF SECRETARY OF STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. of stock, and crops, and orchards, and the like; and that the Faculty should never be unmindful of the specific aims of the Institution, but should lead students by their own enthusiasm, and a familiarty with out-of-door affairs, to a like enthusiasm, and to the reference of all farming operations to the general principles of science. T. C. ABBOT, President. REPORT OF EXPERIMENTS IN TOP-DRESSINGS APPLIED TO GŘÁSS-LANDS AT THE STATE, AGRICULTTRAL COLLEGE FARM, 1864. To the Faculty of the State Agricultural College: The committee appointed to conduct certain experiments in the application of various top-dressings to grass-lands, would present the following report: A piece of ground, 24 rods by 24, in the College Park, was selected for these experiments. This field was sown with oats, last year, without manure, and seeded with timothy and clover, the latter predominating in the growth of the present year. The piece of ground selected appeared to be of even fertility, and the growth of grass and clover prior to the application of any top-dressing was very uniform. The ground was divided into eight equal parts. No. 1 had no top-dressing, serving as a basis of comparison, showing the natural productiveness of the soil. No. 2 received a dressing of plaster at the rate of two bushels per acre. No. 3, five bushels of wood ashes per acre. No. 4, twenty loads of pulverized muck per acre. No. 5, twenty loads of pulverized muck and three bushels of common salt per acre. No. 6, three bushels of common salt per acre. No. 8, twenty loads of cow-manure per acre. These dressings were applied from the 5th to the 10th of May. The grass was cut June 20th and 21st by a "Buckeye Junior" machine, cured in small cocks, and drawn into the barn in good condition, June 25th. Each load being carefully weighed on Fairbanks' Hay-Scale. Yield per acre. The yield per acre of each piece, the kind of top-dressing employed, and the gain per acre, are given in the following table: The second crop of clover, &c., was cut by the same machine August 9th and 10th, was put up in small cocks August 10th and 11th. The cocks were turned August 12th, and drawn into the barn August 15th, each load being carefully weighed, as before. The results are given in a tabular form, as in the first crop: TOP-DRESSING APPLIED. |