and house rent. The professors receive $2,000, and house rent, and the others various lesser sums. Various considerations weighed with the Board in making no reduction of salaries consequent on a reduced income for the years 1877 and 1878.

The cares and duties of the professors have been greatly enlarged with the growth of the institution, without a corresponding increase in the number of officers.

The officers are far more heavily pressed with work than is usual, or is usually thought warrantable in those colleges in which a high class of scientific instruction is given. They have also, at the beginning of the only vacation that exceeds a week in length, to prepare for, and in January, to hold a series of Farmers' Institutes, which, although a pleasant, is a laborious work, that almost exhausts the time they would like, and should have for the preparation of lectures for the coming college year.

I am sure no farmer or mechanic does, because no one can, devote more time or severer effort, to his work than the officers of the college; nor is their work anything so exhausting to the health and nervous system as ours. The officers surely earn, and are worth to the State all that is paid to them. The Board have by severe economy, by a vacancy for some time unsupplied, by the abandonment of one office, and through other favoring circumstances, maintained the salaries at their old rate, as they thought justly due to men who were giving all their time, and efforts, for the good of the State. That these efforts are not fruitless is now universally admitted by the farmers of the State who have kept themselves informed as to the influence the College has exerted.

COURSE OF STUDY.

The course of study is four years in length. Students who take the full course are graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science. The College and its classes are, however, always open to students who come to take select studies, and we have had many who after taking Chemistry and Botany and a few other select branches have not cared, or not been able to complete the course. The following is the course of study:

FRESHMAN CLASS.

Autumn Term.-Algebra, Olney's University; History, Swinton's Outlines; Elements of Rhetoric, D. J. Hill.

Spring Term.-Algebra Completed, Olney's University; Book-keeping (three weeks), Mayhew's Practical; Botany, Gray's Structural; Agriculture, Lectures. Summer Term.-Geometry, Olney; Botany, Gray's Structural, Wood's Manual; French, Otto's Grammar, Bôcher; Elementary Chemistry (two weeks), Lectures.

SOPHOMORE CLASS.

Autumn Term.-Geometry completed, Olney's; Elementary Chemistry, Lecsures, Roscoe; French, Bôcher's Otto's Reader.

Spring Term.-Trigonometry, Olney; Surveying, Lectures; Organic Chemistry, Lectures; Blowpipe and Volumetric Analysis; French, Bôcher's Otto's Reader.

Summer Term.-Mechanics, Peck; Analytical Chemistry, Kedzie's Hand Book.

JUNIORS.

Autumn Term.-Mechanics completed, Peck; Anatomy, Lectures; Agricultural Chemistry, Lectures; Horticulture, Lectures.

Spring Term.-Principles of Human Physiology, J. C. Dalton; Chemical Physics, Miller; Principles of Rhetoric, A. S. Hill.

Summer Term.-Entomology, Lectures, Packard, Cook's Apiary; Meteorology, Lectures; English Literature, Lectures, Chambers' Encyclopedia.

SENIORS.

Autumn Term.-Zoölogy, Lectures; Geology, Dana's Text Book; Agriculture, Lectures; Psychology, Bascom.

Spring Term.-Drawing, Minifie's Geometrical; Astronomy, White; Botany, Laboratory work; Constitution of the United States, Andrews; Moral Philosophy, Fairchild.

Summer Term.-Civil Engineering, Lectures, Trautwine; Political Economy, Lectures; Landscape Gardening, Lectures; Inductive Logic, Fowler.

TEXT BOOKS.-As text books are liable to be changed, students are advised not to purchase books in advance without consulting officers of the College. Slight variations from this course of study will be necessary for the next year, as shown in the catalogue.

THE CHEMICAL DEPARTMENT.

The Chemical Department received a better recognition from the authorities of the College from the start than any other. Modern agricultural chemistry was not twenty years old when the College was founded. In 1840 neither Liebig, Boussingault, nor James F. W. Johnston had written on the application of chemistry to agriculture. Before the opening of the College to students, in May, 1857, the room now used for the library was fitted up as a chemical laboratory and put in charge of Professor L. R. Fisk, now president of Albion College. Having been reared on a farm, and being familiar with its operations, he saw at once the rich field of investigation that lay before the agricultural chemist in the double work of investigating the laws of husbandry and in qualifying others by his instructions for such investigations. He could do little among the stumps, however, in out of door work, but he at once prepared and gave a course of lectures on Agricultural Chemistry.

When Dr. Fisk left at the close of six years' service, the College was fortunate enough to fill the place (Jan. 28, 1863), with R. C. Kedzie, M. D., the present professor of Chemistry.

In 1871 a Chemical Laboratory was constructed, according to a plan made by Dr. Kedzie, after a careful examination of eastern laboratories. Its cost was $11,507.13. It was the first, I believe, of American colleges to put in the Bonn Self-Ventilating Evaporating Hoods, which were in the Bonn building, but had not yet been tried. It was the first also to have the working tables end against the windows instead of between them. The laboratory is supplied with water, and (1877) with gas. A description of the building and its several rooms is given in the report for 1871, pages 9 to 20. It remains to be said that this building, which was thought to be ample for all needs of the College for many years, is now outgrown. Neither the lecture room, nor the working room will longer accommodate, with any crowding, the students in chemistry and its applications. The Legislature will probably be asked for an appropriation for its enlargement.

The regular instruction in Chemistry embraces a course of daily lectures for a term, and two weeks in Elementary Chemistry; a term's daily instruction in Organic Chemistry, and in Blow-pipe and Volumetric Analysis; a term in Laboratory practice in Analytical Chemistry, three hours each day; a term's lectures in Analytical Chemistry; a term's recitation in Chemical Physics; and a term's lectures in Meteorology. The illustrative experiments are numerous. Each student is required to make an analysis of at least one hundred substances, embracing commercial and natural productions, manures, ashes of plants, technical minerals, and soils.

Omitting the synopsis of the other lectures, which is given in the catalogue, I will here transcribe the synopsis of the course in Agricultural Chemistry:

AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY.

Formation and composition of soils; the relations of air and moisture to vegetable growth; connection of heat, light, and electricity with growth of plants; nature and source of food of plants; chemical changes attending vegetable growth; chemistry of the various processes of the farm, as plowing, fallowing, draining, etc.; preparation, preserving, and composting of manure; artificial manure; methods of improving soils by chemical means, by mineral manures, by vegetable manures, by animal manures, by indirect methods; rotation of crops; chemical composition of the various crops; chemistry of the dairy. The instruction in agricultural chemistry is imparted by lectures. Dr. Kedzie has always been active. in all investigations that promised to be useful to farmers, both as chemist in the College, or as a member of medical associations, or of the State Board of Health, of which he has been an active member from the first, and of which he is now president.

In April, 1863, he commenced taking meteorological observations, three times a day, of the state of the thermometer and barometer, and of the clouds, winds, relative humidity, pressure of vapor and rain fall, and these have been continued and published annually to this time,-fifteen years. Ozone observations were added in January, 1871; and it is reported that when Mr. Law, the professor of veterinary in Cornell University, desired records of ozone, our own were found to be the most complete and long continued in the country. These observations are not only printed in our reports, but have been regularly forwarded to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and they have served materially to the understanding of the climate of Central Michigan.

In 1863, Dr. Kedzie investigated the properties of swamp muck, made experiments, and lectured on the subject. He returned to the subject in 1876, Report, p. 224. Experiments in top dressing were made by him in 1864, 1866, and 1868. In 1866, Dr. Kedzie made to the Legislature a Report on the destruction of Forest Trees, and the report was quoted with marked approval throughout the land. Then followed investigation of poisonous arsenical wall papers commonly sold in the shops, to the great destruction of health. The full discussion of the subject appears in the report of the State Board of Health, but a sketch of the importance of the investigation is given in the 1874 report, p. 92. Then followed investigations in ventilation of houses and in the dangers arising from poor kerosene. A plain talk to the farmers about lightning rods, for the purpose of putting them on guard against paying enormous prices for rods worth no more than common bars of iron, led to discussions which resulted in ingeniously contrived and convincing experiments on the passage of frictional electricity through rods. The article of Dr. Kedzie's. was reprinted entire in scientific journals in New York and England.

When the potato beetle made its appearance farmers were frightened away from the use of Paris green by warning communications to the New York Evening Post and other papers. Dr. Kedzie at once grew crops dressed with Paris green; and analyzing soils and fruits found that the fruits (grain) did not imbibe the Paris green, and that the poisonous element was rendered insoluble by chemical action of common soil. The investigations were reprinted in English papers and translated for French and German periodicals.

When the cabbage worms appeared and people began to use Paris green for them as they had done for potato beetles, Dr. Kedzie at once gave warning through the press of the danger.

When the State Convention of Millers set down Clawson wheat as of an inferior grade, Dr. Kedzie, by experiments and analysis contributed much to the settlement of the question of its true relative value. These are some of the ways, gathered from memory without searching them out, in which the chemical department is of service to the State, aside from its main use, that of the instruction of students. They are set forth, not to praise Dr. Kedzie, who does not need praise, but to show that the College interests itself in what is of present interest to farmers. Dr. Kedzie, and Robert F. Kedzie, his assistant, are helping the farm department by analyses of milk, and by other ways, in the farm experiments. It is hoped the useful activity of the department will be remembered when it asks au enlargement of its laboratory.

BOTANY AND HORTICULTURE.

Botany and Horticulture have been from the first recognized as entitled to a place in the instructions of the College. Professor John C. Holmes, of Detroit, to whose efforts the establishment and early success of the College was so largely due, was horticulturist from the opening of the College in May, 1857, to 1862, excepting the year 1859, when there was neither botanist nor horticulturist. Prof. A. N. Prentiss, now of Cornell University, but then a sophomore in the Agricultural College, took charge of the gardens during that year. Dr. George Thurber, now editor of the American Agriculturist of New York, was made Professor of Botany in 1860, and was both botanist and horticulturist in 1863. Professor Prentiss had charge of the department from 1863 to 1869. Will. W. Tracy, a graduate, taught horticulture and landscape gardening from 1870 to 1872 while Professors Prentiss and Beal gave the instruction in botany. Prof. Beal lectured in 1870, and was appointed Professor of Botany in 1871. He still holds the position, and has for the most part been also the Superintendent of the Horticultural Department. During Profesor Prentiss' administration a complete separation of the horticultural from the agricultural department was made. Each department from this time down has been possessed of its own barns, teams, implements, and working force.

BOTANY.

The professor keeps virtually in mind the words of Lord Bacon when he says: "This therefore is the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter." To get the definitions of the parts of plants, and by analysis and a comparison of the parts with an artificial key to determine the name of a plant, and then to prepare a nicely pressed specimen of the flower and leaves, -this has been thought to be all there is of the study of Botany.

With us the student is introduced at once to the plants and made to study them in their forms. He commits no lessons from a book for several weeks until he has learned to trust his own habits of observation. A world of truths lie

about us which we do not see, because we have never been taught to observe them. It is of prime importance that the botanist should be taught to note in his mind the likenesses and differences in every day plants about him. Instruction is then given in the functions of the various parts of different plants, the anatomy of stem, roots, leaves and other organs.

The student is taught the classification of plants, and to a limited extent becomes familiar with the different orders, and the kind of plants found in them, their uses in manufactures, for food, or ornament, and their geographical distribution.

Of course very special attention is given to the grains and grasses, and other plants grown in Michigan. Trees and shrubs are plants to a botanist, and those that grow, or that are cultivated in our State are studied.

Botany makes a near approach to agriculture when it discusses the principles of the germination, growth, fecundation, fruiting, and seed-making processes of plants. The study of any crop sends the student back to the botanist, and then to the chemist for the means of understanding it. Chemistry and botany are sciences underlying husbandry, and the professors of these sciences, when they teach with distinct reference to agriculture, are the professors of scientific, as distinguished from practical agriculture.

The instruction in botany is given, like that in practical agriculture, partly in the Freshman, and partly in the Senior year. In the Senior year the course of study consists of laboratory work with the compound microscope.

HORTICULTURE.

Lectures in horticulture succeed the Freshman course in botany, and is given to the Juniors, inasmuch as during their year the class have systematic work in the Horticultural Department. One afternoon a week a section of this class spends in company with the professor in the orchard, vineyard, gardens, or the park in work which, being wholly for educational purposes, is given without compensation.

The Horticultural Department has allotted to it one-third of so much of the working force of students as is given to farm and gardens-the farm taking two-thirds.

The means of illustration in the Departments of Botany and Horticulture

are:

The botanical gardens about the greenhouse and in other places, where a great variety of plants are grown, and where, as the grounds admit of it, and the purposes of science are not disturbed by it, they are tastefully arranged by the gardener of the College. A large variety of the grasses are grown in rows for study. West of the greenhouse the bank of a ravine has been converted by means of a rockery into a receptacle for plants requiring different degrees of moisture, until at the bottom we have marsh, and water plants.

The greenhouse with its several rooms differing in heat and moisture furnishes the student an opportunity of studying plants that will not grow in our climate, but which illustrate principles of botany and vegetable physiology, or help to a knowledge of different orders, or are themselves of interest for their uses. The number of plants is about 9,000 and of 1,180 species and varieties.

An arboretum north of the professors' houses contains nearly all the kinds of trees that grow in the State, and many which do not, in rows, while in the College Park the trees are labelled, to enable the student to distinguish them. The professor of botany has been preparing a key or guide to the trees.

There is an apple orchard of over 400 trees, embracing about 300 varieties