with seats for 150 students, with two rooms for chemical analysis and desk space for 68 students, with two rooms for quantitative work and original investigation, affording space for 20 additional students, with its choice and extensive chemical and physical apparatus, affords a rare opportunity for students in chemistry and allied sciences. In place of the traditional "one term in chemistry with experimental illustrations," the course in chemistry at this college extends through two years. The students not only witness the experiments in the lecture room, but they have the opportunity to repeat and vary them in the working laboratory. The apparatus is not designed for cabinet show, but actual use at the work tables, and the students get the benefit of this.

Of the work performed by the chemical department for the public good I need not speak in detail because it is everywhere recognized. Agricultural societies, farmers' clubs, granges, pomological associations, as well as private citizens have learned of the college laboratory. When any knotty point comes up for solution or any special subject demands investigation and careful research they instinctively look to the chemical department for aid. Year in and year out the chemical laboratory has been a scene of busy industry in promoting the public weal. The farmi, the garden and the home have been the better for these labors. The representative farmers' association of the State recognized the value of this work when it said in regard to one special investigation by Dr. Kedzie: "It has saved to the farmers of this State more than the Agricultural College ever cost."

THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL SCIENCES.

The department of anatomy, physiology, and zoology is now very thoroughly equipped The attractions in geology, zoology, and anatomy are extensive, and have been selected and arranged with special reference to imparting instruction. The collections in entomology are specially valuable, and the department of economic entomology has had special consideration. In the museum and collections there is not only a manikin, but skeletons of all classes of vertebrates, models of the lower animals, and special organs, which in connection with labratory work-dissections and the study of sytematic zoology-makes the course very complete and gives admirable opportunity for post graduate study. The laboratories are large and convenient, and are always open for the accommodation of students.

Thorough and extensive dissections are made which give the students an accurate knowledge of anatomy. Great pains is taken to acquaint the students. thoroughly with human anatomy and physiology, and without question the fullest and most practical instruction is given in entomology to be found in any general college course in the United States.

This department includes anatomy, human and comparative; physiology of man and the lower animals; entomology, structural, systematic and economic, the latter embracing agriculture and injurious insects; general zoology which considers morphology and systematic zoology, and a brief course in geology. A large collection of injurious insects and a well equipped apiary affords excellent opportunity to illustrate the course in practical entomology.

THE VETERINARY DEPARTMENT,

recently established, promises to become of prime importance in consequence of the large interests engaged in stock raising, and the prevalence of communica

ble diseases among animals. With eighteen states at this hour quarantined against the stock of other states in consequence of these diseases, it is important that we should have men educated specially in veterinary science; that we have in considerable numbers persons skilled in the diseases of domestic animals, and that we no longer depend upon the limited acquirements of the old fashioned "horse doctor." The last Legislature, with commendable liberality, has afforded the college the means to erect a building especially devoted to that science, with a museum and lecture room, with operating rooms and dissecting tables, with manikin and skeletons and all the apparatus needed to illustrate the subject as fully as the best medical colleges illustrate the subjects of the diseases of the human body. All the students in the agricultural course receive instruction in this science, and their interest in the lectures fully indicates their appreciation of their importance. It is worthy of consideration whether a short special course of two years in that and agriculture combined, with the requirement of an advanced antecedent general education, might not meet a popular demand; a course that would be above "quackery" and still within reach of many who cannot devote four full years to get what they want; a course that would send out men who could write a prescription without misspelling, and indite a common business communication in good English.

THE MILITARY DEPARTMENT,

also recently established, promises to be productive of good in an exercise and drill that far excels in beneficial results all that can be claimed by the best conducted gymnasiums. With a competent instructor detailed by the war department, with arms and accoutrements and ammunition donated by the United States, the military feature bids fair to be attractive and useful.

THE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANIC ARTS.

The college, as before remarked, was established by the State purely as an agricultural school; its sole intent was to promote scientific agriculture. In 1862 the general government donated, under certain conditions, to each of the States 30,000 acres of land for each senator and representative in congress for the "endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college, where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts."

Under this act the State of Michigan received about 236,000 acres of land, a little less than the round sum to which it was entitled, in consequence of the shortage by actual survey of the sections donated. The State accepted the grant and in good faith promised to execute the trust. The grant was turned over to the Agricultural College already established. By the terms of the grant one of the functions of the trust was instruction in the mechanic arts, as imperative as that in agriculture, but inasmuch as the agricultural course was already in full operation and the fund from the grant was slow in accumulating, no effort was made until recently to comply with the full conditions of the gift. Last winter the Legislature was appealed to for means to erect the buildings and furnish the equipment (which under the terms of the grant could not be taken from the fund) for the department of mechanic arts. The response was hearty, and an appropriation ample for the initiative of the new course was

made, and the necessary shops are now being erected and the equipments being purchased.

The time is now propitious for the new department. It was hardly practicable to establish it sooner. There was no great public demand for it. The grant was in fact in advance of general public sentiment, but the leading spirits who advocated the land grant saw that in the near future, industrial education, in all its phases, would be a leading factor in our educational system and that, as the mechanical industries grew, instruction in the mechanic arts would become the subject of a live demand. It is so to-day. It has the platform for legitimate deliberative discussion, and all over the country the best equipped minds and the brightest intellects are engaged in this, to us, new leading topic. Continental Europe, older in these industries, long since saw the necessity for special attention to the matter, and during the last fifty years has expended large sums in schools of technology, and the promotion of sciences lying at the base of all the industries. The result has been marvelous. England, that once ruled the industrial as imperially as she did the commercial world, at last became anxious over the competition of nations that for half a century or more have been her lavish purchasers, and began to inquire how this ability to compete in her manufactures had been brought about, and was, after a full investigation into the primal causes, compelled to admit that it was to be attributed, more than anything else, to the schools of technology and mechanic arts, which those countries had had the foresight to establish. England following the lead of her doctrinaires had adhered to the policy that the public should not be called upon to foster professional schools, but that all such, whether learned or industrial, should be the creations of private enterprise, supported by th. 'r patrons. The idea was that if there was sufficient demand for them, there would naturally be ample means and patronage for their establishment. But experience has shown that such is not the case. The plant for such institutions is costly, and the profit uncertain, hence private capital was slow in its investment in such enterprises. Education of any kind is always costly, and if made general, all experience shows that in a large measure, it must be sustained by the State. But this was of a class far more costly than the so-called 'iberal education. It takes time to establish and develop it. Continental Europe was nearly fifty years in experimenting and in so doing spent vast sums of money before the results heretofore mentioned were reached.

But there is an additional reason why such institutions are necessary here. In America the industrial arts are in their infancy, and we are brought face to face with the full-grown industrial organizations of Europe, with which we must compete. Mechanical science has now reached such a stage of development that the mere artisan, that is, the man who devotes his whole time and energies to the manual labor of his employment, will rarely have a comprehensive knowledge of the industry he seeks to promote. Then again, the division. of labor is so great that a majority of the laborers know only one thing, or perform only one operation in the many that go to make up the product, and know nothing of the general principles. The laborer becomes a machine if confined to the machine, and while the industry gains in the one direction by the skill of the human machine, it loses in the other the intelligent inventive genius of the man of observation, thought and experience. Further, the day of the old-fashioned apprenticeship is ended, or practically so, when the young man was bound to serve from 14 to 21 and the master was bound to teach all the principles and the arts of the industry, so that with the experience of seven or

more years, and the general knowledge picked up here and there he became a mechanic well-versed in all the principles and details of his profession.

Our industries are an important factor in our body politic; not the controlling one, but a tremendously powerful one, and our future is to be largely shaped by our ability to manufacture as well and as cheaply as any one else. To do this we must put intelligence into our shops and theoretical instruction into our schools. We must occupy this ground ourselves, with our own brains and muscle. Two-thirds of our foremen and master mechanics are foreigners, educated in the technical schools of Europe, or instructed by an apprenticeship, which is not germane to our institutions. An apprenticeship is considered by our young men but a remove from serfdom, and the only chance we have for success is to import our skilled mechanics or educate them here.

Hence there is a place, and a large and well-defined one, for schools of technology; institutions where may be taught the sciences upon which our industries depend. The mere shop is no place for this instruction; there is neither time nor opportunity to discuss the general principles upon which the industry is based. There should be some place or institution capable of making an intelligent mechanic; intelligent in all the principles of mechanics, in the law of motion, of sound, of light, in the kinds and strength of material, of friction, inertia, electricity, steam, chemistry, with just enough of the manual training to demonstrate the principles. Such a mechanic with this knowledge can step into a shop and in a short time distance the man who has no schooling in these principles; he can sooner acquire the skill in his profession, and it will be of more service in that his intelligence goes with it hand in hand.

The object of our new department of mechanic arts is to supply this want. Our purpose and wish is to take the young man who has an aptitude and taste for mechanical industry from the shop, give him a thorough course in drawing and design, thorough instruction in all those general principles which he cannot obtain elsewhere, for the reasons heretofore stated, give him daily practical work in the shop, and then return him to the shop, with a skill competent to take his place as a journeyman, and an intelligence fitting him for foremanship; with a moral purpose not above working at the bench or the forge, and yet with a capability of handling men and affairs. Such a man will as journeyman be the first to be engaged and the last to be discharged; such a man is on the high road, through the shop, to the head of his industry, a journeyman with the germ and possibilities of a master mechanic. We do not seek to make men "bosses." Our industrial foremen are a little shy of the "college-bred mechanic," for the reason, as they say, "he is apt to have the big head." But that depends upon the college at which he is bred. We grant you that the tendency of the regula tion college whose purpose is a general and so-called liberal education is to breed, to use the words of another, "a sort of contempt for manual labor and the man who performs it, and to give its students very stilted notions about culture and the exalted character of the work they must do because, forsooth, they are graduates." Such a man "is not calculated to blossom out into the common-sense, aggressive, enterprising young American, who is ready to do anything honorable until something better offers, and who is sure to make his way in the world." Is it possible to have a college that shall educate the scholar and yet save the artisan; that shall make the man of culture and yet preserve the farmer? We believe it is, and that the Agricultural College of Michigan is such an institution. This leads us fully to consider finally the general purposes of the college. The first one we will note is that it seeks to foster and encourage

THE INDUSTRIAL IMPULSE.

The country is full to repletion of lawyers, doctors, clerks, agents and brokers; a percentage, honest, worthy, able, laborious gentlemen, ornaments to their profession, but a large proportion living by their wits, jugglers in the strict sense of the term, making a precarious living, seeking, some of them, to wear clean clothes at the expense of a clean character, all of them desiring to live without work. We have enough of such. As a rule they have a hard time, and did they but know it, a little hard manual labor would be a tonic to their manhood. But in the first place they are shirks naturally, and in the second place they have had associations that have led them to believe that manual labor is degrading. Mere drudgery, we grant you, in any line of business is never an ennobling pursuit, but to say or believe that intelligent manual labor is degrading is a reflection on the Divine mind that created hands as well as brain. They go together. Drudgery without intelligence is slavery; manual labor with intelligence is freedom. Whatever interests a man has growth in it. Greek roots have made some very small men, the other kind many large ones. There is health and vigor in knowing how to do something; there is better health and more manly vigor in doing it. A man with a trade has a moral capability; it is a fence around his energies to keep off trespassers. The Jews used to say: "He that teacheth not his son a trade, doeth the same as if he taught him to be a thief." You give a man something for his hands to do and you have taken hostage for good citizenship. The habit of daily toil is a better conservative of the peace than a paid constable. Our prisons are filled with loafers, our poorhouses with beggars and our polities with demagogues, gravitated there for the want of the little moral purpose lying behind a good day's work.

A

So we believe that the best legacy one can leave to a son is a willingness to work. We believe that that institution is the best that not only teaches the law, but teaches a trade; that not only teaches a science but what to do with it; that teaches the application with mind and heart and hand; that teaches that all labor is honorable; that trains the hand as well as the intellect. There is a moral influence around institutions as well as surrounding men; they have character as well-no two alike. The air is full of the predominating purpose. true normal school is full of the teachers' work; instructors talk about it, students write and orate about it. So with a law or medical school; each is filled with a pervading strength-a predominating sentiment which gives character to the institution and to the students. To a like degree is it true that an institution where at stated times all work with their hands, will turn out students that believe that manual labor is not dishonorable, that take pleasure in robust work directed by intelligence. Such an institution has such morale in it and about it that young men will leave its halls and enter the shop or go to the farm with no sense of humiliation or disgrace, capable of managing affairs of state, and of putting their hands to work at anything worth doing. Now, it stands to reason that a man so educated is a better man, a more symmetrical man, a more capable man, than if he went out into the world with false notions, of life's duties and life's labors. It is the little rudder that guides the large ship that without it would go upon the rocks; so it is this moral purpose that les behind a man's forceful energies, to use them well and honestly that saves many a strong nature from shipwreck.

We believe this college has the power to make just such men and we proclaim to all the world, that we do not want a young man that is ashamed to work