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hope that nothing might ever happen to overturn it. The formation of a Ladies' department was very much desired by him, but this he did not live to

see.

He was in truth a very father to the College-wise, patient, and active. Graceful and dignified in bearing, he was a man of whose very appearance we were proud

Judge Wells was born in Steubenville, O., June 6, 1812, educated at Kenyon College, read law in the office of J. & D. Collier of Steubenville, and was admitted to practice in 1832.

In 1840, and again in 1860, he was a president al elector. President Lincoln tendered him the position of minister to Honduras, and President Johnson the place of consul to Manchester, England, both of which were declined.

In 1873 Governor Bagley appointed Judge Wells one of the eighteen commissioners to prepare and report a Constitution for the State of Michigan. This was prepared and submitted, and rejected by the electors. In August, 1862, Judge Wells raised in western Michigan the Twenty-fifth infantry, Michigan volunteers, Col. O. H. Moore commanding. In June, 1874, he was appointed by President Grant presiding judge of the court of Alabama claims. This court held its sessions for the first two and a half years in Washington, and entered judgment in over 2,000 cases, distributing $9,316,120.25. General Grant, in his annual message in 1875 and 1876, commended in warm terms of praise the action of this court. Subsequently, when the court was re-organized, Judge Wells was again appointed presiding judge, but was compelled to resign, on account of ill-health, before the work of the court was completed.

He was a man of very fine personal appearance, of large acquaintance with leading men throughout the country, and possessed a most thorough knowledge of the country, its institutions, and the statesmen of the past forty years; a fine talker, one of the most interesting and instructive; a prolific writer, having contributed to the press many valuable articles on a great variety of subjects. He was a model in his domestic life and in his habits of living. His was the culture of one who possessed the highest tastes and the noblest views of life.

INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF EDWIN WILLITS.

DELIVERED AUGUST 19, 1885.

This institution is 28 years old. May 13, 1857, the buildings and grounds were dedicated by the State Board of Education, with appropriate services, in the presence of the governor, several officers of the State government, and a large concourse of citizens from various portions of the State. It was the first Agricultural College on the continent. Other States had moved in the same direction, but Michigan forestalled all others in the enterprise of establishing an institution of learning whose sole object should be the intelligent investiga tion and application of subjects pertaining to agriculture and the education of young men into a higher and, if possible, better system of farming, as well as into a cultured, practical manhood.

The enterprise had been well considered. It was the creature of the Michigan State Agricultural Society, and to the persistent exertions of that body the State largely owes the prompt consideration given to the subject. As early as Dec. 19, 1849, at the second annual meeting of the executive committee of that society at Jackson, at which were present Gov. E. Ransom, F. S. Finlay, Bela Hubbard, Michael Shoemaker and others, it was resolved to interest the Legislature in establishing a state central Agricultural office, with which should be connected a museum of agricultural products and implements and an agricultural library, and as soon as practicable an Agricultural College and a model farm. A committee was duly appointed to memorialize the Legislature, and in January, 1850, Bela Hubbard, for the committee, presented the subject to the legislature in a well considered memorial, in which he set forth what special subjects ought to be taught and summed up the scope of such an institution by saying that there should be taught there those branches of education which will tend to render agriculture not only a useful, but a learned and liberal profession, and its cultivators not the bone and sinew' merely, but ornaments of society."

Nothing came of the effort in the Legislature in 1850, but the sentiment had grown so strong in its favor that the constitution of that year required the Legislature, as soon as practicable, to provide for the establishment of an agricultural school." At a meeting of the executive committee of said society, Dec. 14, 1852, Messrs. Dort, Shoemaker, and Moore were appo nted a committee to urge upon the Legislature the immediate compliance with the provision of the new constitution relative to the agricultural school, advising that it temporarily be adopted as a branch of the University; but that its permanent location should not be established in immediate proximity to any existing educational institution but on a model and experimental farm of 640 acres. The subject

was presented to the Legislature of 1853, and while it was favorably received, it was not acted upon. In the meantime the State Board of Education had caused to be taught at the Normal school the elements of scientific agriculture, and the regents of the University had organized an agricultural school as part of the scientific course then recently adopted, and had announced a free course of lectures in the University upon agricultural science. The friends of both institutions sought to have the proposed "agricultural school" made a branch of the institution whose interests they sought to further. The discussion became quite animated and general all over the State, so that, when the executive committee of the State Agricultural Society met Dec. 12, 1853, the subject formed a prominent topic for action. After full discussion, on motion of Mr. Bartlett of Monroe, it was resolved "That an Agricultural College should be separate from any other institution," and a committee was to urge action upon the Legislature about to convene.

The result was that the Legislature by act of Feb. 12, 1855, established this college, providing that it should be located within ten miles of Lansing, the site to be on a farm of not less than 500 acres, to be selected subject to the approval of the State Board of Education, by the president and executive committee of the State Agricultural Society. The present site, then a virgin wilderness, three miles east of the city of Lansing, was, June 16, 1855, selected, and May 13, 1857, on this very spot, as near as may be, the new enterprise was dedicated.

It is instructive to read the literature, the addresses, and the plans of that time: to follow the hopes and great expectations, not fully realized as yet, the intelligent appreciation of the necessity for scientific agriculture, and the faith that great results would follow their labors. Gov. Kinsley S. Bingham said: "One of the highest objects to be attained by the establishment of an Agricultural college is to educate and dignify the character of labor." "A new era is dawning upon the vision of the farmer-a new light is illuminating his path, and a new interest and new pleasures are urging him on to improvement. His intellect comes to the aid of his hands, and he appreciates the full dignity of his chosen pursuit."

So with prayer and prophecy they laid the foundations of this institution. From the beginning it had two difficulties to contend with. The first, the unfortunate selection of the site so far as immediate results were concerned. The second the unsettled policy for years as to its independent status, or rather the constant demand that it should be made the adjunct of some existing institution, which, while it was not strong enough to accomplish its removal, to a certain extent crippled its efficiency and sharpened criticism.

It was a pioneer institution in the literal sense; not only was it the first of its kind, but it began at the stump, so to speak. The first tools needed were an ax to fell a tree and a spade to dig a well. It has gone through all the stages of pioneer life; it has had its corduroy roads, its chills and fevers, chills predominating; it was almost a generation "getting out of the woods;" so that its primal energies were in a sense wasted in subduing a farm, in taking a large tract of land in a state of nature and fitting it to become a "model farm"instead of taking improved land all ready for experiment. The result was that many of the promoters of the enterprise became impatient, then cool, and finally opposed to it. They could not wait. There was not much science, of course, needed in clearing land, and the critics looked in vain, as they said, for results, except financial ones, on the wrong side of the ledger. Their clamor brought on the stump puller before nature had had time to make stump pulling eco

nomical, and so all along the line the board and the faculty worked at a disadvantage, but with heroic persistency they continued their efforts until the people begin to think the enterprise pays, not always in the direct sense of financial profit in the enterprise itself, but as we hope and feel assured, in the higher field as a promoter of scientific intelligence.

We will not spend time on the second disability encountered.

It needs but

a casual inquiry into the fate of all those cases where an agricultural school has been made an adjunct of a purely literary or scientific educational institution, to be convinced that sooner or later the agricultural feature is lost, or plays so subordinate a part as to discourage young men from entering it, and to dishearten those who had hoped that literature and science would illumine the path of the agriculturist. We will, before we close, attempt to explain why, logically, this must always be the result; suffice it to say that in Europe and in this country, those agricultural schools have prospered best that have retained their independent status.

But we have now passed the pioneer steps of our history, and we stand to-day well equipped for work, and better able to meet all just demands than ever before. Fair consideration of the past will demonstrate that this Agricultural College has been a potent factor in the dominion of scientific investigation and has done a grand work. Twenty-eight years ago this spot, now the center of a beautiful park of nearly 100 acres, with its outlying fields of fertile beauty, its sweeping drives and foot paths, its beautiful residences and stately structures, was a girdled clearing with its two or three college halls, the beginning of a future full of hope, and a future not without its victories and substantial results. In the years that have intervened nearly 2,000 students have entered its halls, 360 have graduated, and all, whether they have stayed months or years, have gone forth with a purpose ennobled by their associations here, and the larger proportion of them have in the following years adopted agriculture as a profession. Of the graduates over 50 per cent of them are farmers or in kindred pursuits. Sixteen are professors or instructors in agricultural colleges, north and south, east and west. One is the president of an agricultural college. Another has almost from its foundation been a member of the Illinois industrial university, and is now president of the board. There is not a professional school, either of law or medicine, in the country which can show a larger percentage of graduates who finally follow the profession therein taught, and this notwithstanding the fact that many have entered the Agricultural College with the avowed intention of not following agriculture as a life pursuit. The doors have not been barred against such, for the reason that even these in their respective spheres in life will be instinct with agricultural tendencies, and will be active promoters of agricultural science.

So much in rapid sketch of what this college has been; now a brief outline of what it is and what it has facilities for doing. Remark has been made of the beautiful park that lies around us. It is an open book for the daily instruction of the student, with nearly every tree and plant that can be grown in this climate duly labeled, with its lesson in landscape gardening the daily study of teacher and pupils, all an educator of refined taste, and a practical exemplification of what tree and shrub, lawn and drive can do in adorning a home.

THE FARM.

Extended practical instruction is given upon land drainage, rotation of crops, the proper cultivation of crops, the management of manures, care of farm

premises and implements, breeds of domestic animals, their characteristics and adaptations, the feeding of animals, marketing, farm accounts, farm law, etc. Theoretical instruction is supplemented, illustrated and enforced by the actual working of a farm of 600 acres, with improved buildings, implements, and the various breeds of stock.

It is the purpose of the board of agriculture to have the farm managed in accordance with the best methods; to emphasize the value of order and system in all farm operations by example; to furnish a certain quota of students labor, 10 to 15 hours each week; to give all students who desire, and make the right use of their opportunities, some knowledge and skill in most of the details, the fundamentals of farm practice.

As far as time and means will permit a portion will be used for experimental work, the testing of new grains and grasses, while the feeding of the different breeds of animals will receive attention.

THE BOTANICAL DEPARTMENT.

The botanical laboratory and museum of vegetable products with the needed rooms occupy the whole of a fine gothic building 46x66 feet, two stories high, with a gallery above. The rooms contain many of the most recent and valuable works on botany, a fine herbarium, including mosses and fungi; a collection of seeds, grains, grasses, fruits and preparations ready for study; the state collection of forestry products shown at Philadelphia and New Orleans, for which diplomas were given. The laboratory contains a large number of good compound miscroscopes with much useful accessory apparatus.

With an arboretum of 200 specie, a botanic garden of 700, green-houses containing 1,000 species and varieties, the parks, gardens and orchards many more, the botanical department is rarely at a loss for any kind of material for study and illustration.

In 1884 an eminent eastern professor of botany who had studied in Europe and visited the best laboratories, described their apparatus which was no better than that now used at this college. In a scientific journal he includes Michigan Agricultural College among the list of four colleges which "had taken the initiative in introducing needed reforms, and already a most promising crop of fruit is the result."

The botanical department by its testing of vegetable and grass seeds has without doubt been largely instrumental in improving the quality of those offered in the markets; and the demonstration by a long and cessful line of experiments in crossing plants grown in one place with those of the same variety raised in a distant locality, that the product is thereby largely improved in quality and amount, has met the approval of scientists, and scientific Journals, and will in time be productive of substantial results whose value cannot well be measured, while the future of the 175 kinds of grasses grown in the grass plats of the botanical garden is of a promise that may well challenge competition in this country with its great variety of soils and climates. It is with great pleasure that we note the fact that the botanical department of the Agricultural College has placed itself in the front rank for scientific research, for original investigation and in the facilities offered to students in its regular course of one and one-half years.

THE CHEMICAL DEPARTMENT.

The chemical department with its laboratory of 18 rooms, a lecture room

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