THE WORK OF THE SOCIETY FOR AGRI-
CULTURAL EDUCATION.+
DURING the sixties in the Agricultural
College, with which I have long been con-
nected, one professor taught classes in ag-
riculture, animal physiology, veterinary,
breeds of live stock, stock feeding, farm
crops, civil engineering, and was superin-
tendent of the farm. In recent times this
work has been placed in the hands of a
dozen or more persons. I need not enum-
erate similar instances of the recent divis-
ion of labor as exemplified in our universi-
ties. This is a day of specialists and the
end is not yet.
The American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, which we shall attend
here next week, when first organized had
no sections, but the members all met to-
gether as long as the meetings continued.
By degrees, as you all know, they increased
till there are now nine sections, each with a
full quota of officers, not to mention some
sub-sections.
Recently, as though this was not enough,
there have been formed a considerable num-
ber of distinct organizations, the programs
of some of which contain much the same
range of papers, presented mostly by the

t President's Address at the Twentieth Meeting of
the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science.

same members as those in the parent so-
ciety.
Meetings during this week and next will
be held here by fifteen affiliated societies.
In December, 1898, nine separate socie-
ties met during the same week at this uni-
versity, and nearly every paper presented
would have been received by some of the
sections of the American Association.
The Fifth Congress of American Physi-
cians and Surgeons was held at Washing-
ton, D. C., on May 1st, 2d and 3d. Four-
teen distinet societies joined in the triennial
Congress.
In much the same way journals occupy-
ing special fields of science have multiplied.
Previous to 1880, a number of American
societies were organized for the discussion
of agricultural topics and those of a kin-
dred nature. For several reasons most of
these survived only long enough to hold
from one to three meetings.
In 1880, at Boston, a new plan was tried,
viz, that of organizing the Society for the
Promotion of Agricultural Science, consist-
ing of twenty-one persons. It was the de-
termination of its members to strive for
papers of genuine worth and make no effort
to draw crowded houses or to make a great
display in any manner, whatever. The So-
ciety after continuing for twenty-one years
has demonstrated beyond question that it
is entitled to live and has important work
to perform. In all, up to this time, there
have been only one hundred and ten mem-
bers. Those who have continued active,
have been too conservative to suit a very
few who were impatient for large num-
bers and more display. To most of us, it
seemed of first importance to become ac-
quainted with each other and learn the
peculiarities of the members. Some men
are restive and never remain active in any
society for a very long time. Such may be
expected to drop out and others will be
elected to fill the places left vacant. Had

329
the membership been offered to all who
sought it, there is little doubt that the So-
ciety would have scarcely survived long
enough to hold ten annual meetings. As
it is the membership has gradually increased
and is larger than ever before, with other
capable men ready to seek admittance.
The Society was never so strong as it is
to-day and the chances are that with
wise management it will long continue to
strengthen.
Every person who has long been an ac-
tive member of any of the societies above
mentioned, and many others, must be aware
that a few persons in each need to contin-
ually exert themselves to prevent the death
of the Society.
Probably there is no exception to the
general rule that, a society like a business
enterprise, before meeting with any marked
degree of success must pass through some
trials, metaphorically, must have the
mumps, the chicken pox, measles, whoop-
ing cough, the grippe, after which, if it
stand the strain well, it may be ready to
engage in successful work.
In 1887, Congress began appropriating to
each state and territory $15,000 a year
for conducting experiments in agriculture.
During the same period, the U. S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture has rapidly extended its
work, covering almost every conceivable
field of agriculture and even some beyond
its limits. The chiefs, and assistants and
students are usually most capable and num-
ber all told over 600 persons.
The work performed by the Department
is stupendous, covering a range of topics
in a most creditable manner, and the value
to the country is beyond estimate. To fa-
cilitate the work of experiment stations,
including the agricultural colleges, and a
small number from the department of agri-
culture, an annual conference of delegates
is held once a year. Not only are the
traveling expenses of these delegates paid,

but the proceedings are printed and widely
distributed by the government. Some have
said, "Why isn't this an ideal plan, and
why cannot these delegates from college and
station perform all that it was intended
should be done by the Society for the Pro-
motion of Agricultural Science ?" Here is
the answer: (1) The presidents of the col-
leges and the directors of the stations are
almost the only persons who attend these
conferences oftener than once or twice in
five years or more, and most of those who
perform the experiments are never sent to
the meetings. This scarcely gives any op-
portunity for the experimenters and profes-
sors of the colleges to maintain a continued
interest in committee work and in other re-
spects. For these reasons and others, a con-
siderable number of them have become dis-
couraged and advise standing by the So-
ciety for the Promotion of Agricultural Sci-
ence. (2) Not two-thirds of our members
are connected with any experiment station
in the United States, and therefore, are in-
eligible as delegates to the meetings. (3)
The time for holding the meetings of the
station delegates comes at a season of the
year when the teachers are busy in labora-
tory and class room. (4) Other reasons at
this time need not be given.
It is not only a pleasant privilege, but a
duty, even a necessity for teachers of vari-
ous sciences and arts in agricultural courses
to meet occasionally for acquaintance, each
helping the other. Every year new sub-
jects are developed and new and improved
methods are discovered for demonstration.
He who does not continually exert himself,
will soon fall behind the race. No where
is this more apparent than in agricultural
colleges and experiment stations, for their
work is of recent origin.
As athletics in these times interests nearly
all students in a university, so the modern
trend of agricultural education interests
every one of our members. We are all in-

330
terested in aiming to shape good courses
in agriculture, each championing his own
department.
Almost any one in short order can place
on paper groups of studies for each term of
four years and call it a course of study, but
to begin at the right end, experimenting
and working out all the details of each
topic, assigning reasons for each, before
generalizing, classifying and grouping into
courses requires much time, patience, skill
and mature judgment. Nor can we ever
expect to secure a uniformity in courses of
study for different colleges. These must
vary in different states to correspond to the
demands of the people, the views of the
faculty, and the special fitness of the mem-
bers of the faculty for teaching certain
topics. For twenty-five years I have been
at work adjusting courses in agriculture to
suit the views of myself and many new men
as they entered the faculty from time to time.
No two professors of agriculture or horti-
culture think alike. Besides great advances
are all the time being made. There have
come along one after the other or by twos
and threes during thirty years, a host of new
things, each clamoring for a place in the
course, such as plant histology, parasitic
fungi, the botanical study of grasses and
other forage plants, the critical study of
weeds from various stand points, forestry,
the use of insecticides and fungicides, soil
physics, stock feeding from the scientific side,
growing beets and making sugar from them,
making butter and cheese with scientific
explanations for every step of the process,
and smallest of all, though by no means
of least importance, the little microbes as
helps and hindrances to agriculture.
Some of our members are especially
trained for the work of adjusting courses of
study from time to time, to keep up to date,
but to plan a course of study in agriculture
which shall remain satisfactory and up with
the times for more than a year or two at a

f

time will be as disappointing as to attempt
to deliver a course of lectures that shall not
need remodelling in many particulars every
year or two.
This is the way President Eliot put the
question in his annual report for 1888-1889 :
"A problem has been pressing upon every
member of the board, old or young, expe-
rienced or unpracticed. During recent
years every college teacher has been forced
to answer anew the personal questions-
What can I best teach, and how shall I
teach it? Every man has really been
obliged to take up new subjects and to treat
them by new methods. There is not a single
member of the faculty who is to-day teach-
ing what he taught fifteen years ago as he
then taught it. Each teacher has had to
recast his own work, each department re-
peatedly to modify and extend its series of
courses, and the faculty as a whole, to in-
vent, readjust, and expand the comprehen-
sive framework within which all these rapid
changes and steady growth have taken
place."
Notwithstanding all this, we must keep
diligently studying to perfect even for the
time, a schedule of studies, approaching
nearer and nearer the ideal, though we
never attain perfection.
University extension work has become a
familiar phrase. Some professors and as-
sistants in universities now devote all their
time to the subject, while others devote a
limited portion of time. The entire con-
tents of magazines dwell on extension work.
In 1857, the first students entered the
oldest agricultural college now in existence
in this country. That was 43 years ago in
April last. Such colleges had no pattern to
follow, no men trained to the work; most
of the farmers from the start were confi-
dent that such institutions would prove of
no value; it was entirely against tradition.
The colleges dwindled with a very short roll
of students with no end of ridicule. What

331
Note that Illinois University

was to be done? If the farmers would not
send their sons to the colleges nor encour-
age their support, it was only a question of
a few years when all such enterprises must
be abandoned. Congress had made liberal
endowments. If the farmers will not go to
the colleges, then the colleges must go to
the farmers. It was a matter of necessity.
University extension is the taking of the
university or college to the people, when
the people cannot or will not go to the col-
lege or university.
According to H. B. Adams in the Forum
for 1891, page 510, "The movement origi-
nated in the year 1867 in academic lectures
to the school teachers and working men of
the North England by Professor James
Stuart of Cambridge, now member of Par-
liament."
A course was given in Great Britain by
some of the professors in Cambridge Uni-
versity in 1873.
So far as I know the following account
explains the origin of extension work in
this country, at least its connection with
agricultural colleges. On August 30, 1871,
the trustees of the Illinois Industrial Uni-
versity, now known as the University of
Illinois, passed a resolution that the regent
and corresponding secretary be authorized
to make such arrangements for holding,
during the coming winter, Farmers' Insti-
tutes, at the University and in other parts
of the State, as they might find advisable.
Several institutes were held that year and
others in succeeding years. The circular
said, "We want to bring the live practical
men and the live scientific men together
that all may be benefited."
The regent of the University, Dr. J. M.
Gregory, was the leading spirit in starting
institutes in Illinois. Early in 1876, Mich-
igan Agricultural College held her first in-
stitutes.
began University extension two years be-
fore Cambridge in England. The rapid

increase in the number and efficiency of
institutes in most of the northern states is
a subject familiar to all of you. A genera-
tion of objectors to good Agricultural Col-
leges has passed away and their places are
occupied by those who are attentive and
enthusiastic. Praise and support of the
agricultural college has taken the place of
apathy and criticism, and extension work
has done it. More recently, beginning in
1888 to 1890, a considerable number of
universities and colleges in this country
have undertaken extension work in variety.
Perhaps some of them saw the benefit that
followed such efforts, made by the agricul-
tural colleges. Itinerant instructors have
been employed to work among manufac-
turers of butter and cheese in Canada and
Wisconsin. In New York, special schools,
enduring for a week, for giving instructions
in horticulture, were held in many country
school districts.
Extension reading courses are accom-
plishing something. Almost every plan
conceivable has apparently been tried to
arouse and attract men toward better meth-
ods in agriculture as aided by a scientific
education. One of the most recent of these
movements in agricultural education is the
introduction of what is known as 'Nature
Study' or 'Elementary Science' in the
rural schools. We are most fortunate at
this meeting in having with us an honored
member who is brim full with experience
and enthusiasm concerning this important
subject. We are eager to listen to what he
shall say. I am sure that I voice the opin-
ion of every member of this Society when
I say that we all favor a liberal education.
None of us could dispense with mathemat-
ics, one or more languages and other sub-
stantial knowledge to be acquired in com-
pleting a course of study in any college in
the land. Mathematics, Latin, rhetoric, his-
tory, physiology, English literature, polit-
ical economy, ethics, chemistry, zoology,

332
botany and other branches of learning are
placed in college courses, not necessarily
because some of them give a better training
than others, but because their study trains
the person in different directions. A good
course of study for the mind is comparable
to a symmetrical training for the body,
one develops many mental faculties, the
other many of the muscles of the body. As
the last echoes of the conflict between the
champions of the classics and the natural
sciences have not yet died away, will you
permit me to refer briefly to the subject at
this time? The opinions of educated men
who lived eighty or ninety years ago are not
to be taken in evidence in the matter, as
there was no natural science in those days
comparable to that of the present day. Nor
can the opinions of philologists be taken
without some degree of allowance, as their
judgment is liable to be biased and one-
sided, unless they have also had the bene-
fit of a thorough training in botany and
zoology for at least three years. They
claim much for a study of Greek or Latin
continued for four to five years, while they
do not see great advantages in studying
botany and zoology for one or two years.
I will try to point out as fairly as I can
some of the peculiar training afforded by
three selected types of studies, viz, Mathe-
matics, Latin and Botany.
(1) The utility of the study of mathe-
matics is granted by every educated per-
son. (2) There is no substitute for mathe-
matics as a training in exact reasoning. (3)
By this study a student learns to use con-
cise language. (4) A clear statement is
given, and step by step an inevitable con-
clusion is reached which is clear and accu-
rate. (5) Here we find excellent examples
of deductive reasoning.
The study of Latin (1) cultivates and
strengthens the memory. (2) The faculty
of attention or mental concentration is de-
veloped, that is, the successful student

learns the significance of genuine study.
(3) The perceptive faculties are well trained.
(4) The study of Latin should lead to clear
and concise speech and help to a better un-
derstanding of English. (5) Latin has an
obvious etymological value, helping to un-
derstand the meaning of many English
words. (6) It gives a training in the use
of synonyms. (7) Latin cultivates the
power of interpretation. (8) It exercises
skill of a peculiar kind to observe all the
shades of meaning of each Latin word in a
long and intricate sentence and then trans-
late it into clear and elegant English. (9)
It requires the most discriminating use of
the eye, mental alertness, the imagina-
tion, and the judgment. (10) There lies a
thought clothed in Latin words; it is to be
expressed in correct English. (11) The
study enables one to get some of the best
thoughts at first hand.
The advantages claimed for the study of
botany are: (1) There is nothing better
for training the powers of observation. (2)
The comparison of one plant or one part of
a plant with another cultivates the power
of inductive reasoning. (3) In learning the
definitions of new words, the memory is
strengthened, the vocabulary enlarged. (4)
There is nothing better to train the power
of precise and brief description in using each
word with a definite meaning. (5) To
follow successive changes that take place in
shape, proportion, size, color, as seen in one
plant from seed to maturity, develops the
observation, powers of description, and the
judgment. (6) By experimenting to learn
the results that follow changes in tempera-
ture, light, moisture; by mutilating or re-
moving certain parts, many facts may be
obtained enabling one to arrive at certain
correct conclusions. (7) To become ac-
quainted with the minute anatomy of plants
by the aid of sections made in different di-
rections and seen with a compound micro-
scope cultivates the imagination as well as

333
the powers of observation and reasoning.
(8) The preparation of materials for ex-
amination trains the hand to precision as
well as the eye and the judgment. (9)
"In studying botany a student gains in
analytic and synthetic powers," T. C.
Abott. (10) "It is the best system of
practical logic, and the study exercises and
shapes at once both the powers of reasoning
and observation, more probably than any
other pursuit," Asa Gray, who possessed a
good knowledge of mathematics and Latin
as well as of botany.
What shall I say of the value of training
acquired by studying bacteria and lichens,
by experimenting to demonstrate that cer-
tain fungi, like wheat rust and many others,
assume two distinct forms on each of two
different host plants? Here is need of ex-
treme care to eliminate all sources of error.
Facts are at length acquired (not given)
and correct inevitable conclusions reached.
Take one step into the domain of horti-
culture. Selecting the parents and cross-
ing one species or variety of plant with
another, with the view of securing new and
improved sorts, command the use of the
eye, hand, imagination, keen judgment, and
the experience of experts.
In selecting and matching apples suitable
to exhibit at a fair, the eye, the sense of
smell and taste and feeling, as well as the
judgment are called into action.
Mathematics starts with definite indis-
putable facts to demonstrate a proposition.
Latin is based on usage and authority,
not on proof. In botany the facts are first
to be discovered and then a truth demon-
strated. This is the process of reasoning in
a large per cent. of all practical matters of
life. Linguists claim that the student should
devote four to five years to the study of
Latin, while one or two years is considered
ample time for botany. Let the student de-
vote a year or two to Latin and four or five
to botany and then make the comparisons.

You might naturally expect me to quote
a few statements from Herbert Spencer.
Here they are, old, but good :
"The education of most value for guid-
ance, must at the same time be education
of most value for discipline." "One ad-
vantage claimed for that devotion to lan-
guage learning is that the memory is
thereby strengthened. But the truth is,
that the sciences afford far wider fields for
the exercise of memory." "And when
we pass to the organic sciences, the effect
of memory becomes still greater." "While
for the training of mere memory, science
is as good as, if not better than language;
it has an immense superiority in the kind
of memory it cultivates. In language the
facts are in a great measure incidental ; in
the acquirement of science, the connections
of ideas correspond to facts that are mostly
necessary. While the one exercises mem-
ory only, the other exercises both memory
and understanding. A great superiority
of science over languages as a means of dis-
cipline, is that it cultivates the judgment to
a greater degree."
"The learning of language tends further
to increase the already undue respect for
authority. Quite oppcsite is the attitude
of mind generated by the cultivation of
science, which appeals to individual reason.
Every step in a scientific investigation is
submitted to the judgment. It exercises
perseverance and sincerity." "In all its
effects learning the meaning of things, is
better than learning the meanings of words."
I may have made a mistake in making this
digression, but it is now all over.
I think the most thoroughly educated
people are now agreed that the method of
pursuing a study is of more importance
than the selection of a subject. They be-
lieve that botany or zoology well taught,
for the same length of time, affords as much
discipline and culture as Latin, Greek or
philosophy. But you may weary of this.

334
The programs of our meetings always
announce some papers which have a scien-
tific bearing on agriculture, forestry or some
kindred line of business. As our members
are specialists, it is fitting that we have
each year a number of addresses of a gen-
eral nature, such as summaries of prog-
ress, methods of experimenting, methods of
teaching certain subjects, short syllabi of
courses of study, and new points of general
interest. These will be understood and
will interest all, and will be likely to pro-
voke a general discussion by the members.
The work of this Society during the past
twenty years has apparently had a marked
influence on the selection of subjects for
discussion in some of the societies of this
country. As an instance of the practical
tendency of these subjects, if I may so ex-
press it, I cite you the admirable address of
Vice-President Gage a year ago before Sec-
tion F, of the A. A. A. S. at the Columbus
meeting on 'The Importance and Promise
in the Study of Domestic Animals.' Here
are two sentences: " It is most earnestly be-
lieved, however, that in the whole range of
zoology, no forms offer a greater reward for
the study of the problems of life, especially
in the higher groups, than the domestic ani-
mals. The importance of the study cannot
be over-estimated from a purely scientific
standpoint, and certainly if the prosperity,
happiness and advancement of the human
race are put in the count the subject is of
transcendent importance."
Reference of a like nature might be made
to numerous programs of scientific societies,
to courses of study in colleges and univer-
ties, to contributions to the best scientific
journals of the day, but no argument on the
subject is needed at this time, for the rea-
son that no observing person can be found
in this audience who does not already rec-
ognize the truth of the statement that I
have last made.
I thank you for the high honor of choos-

ing me president for a third time, and con-
gratulate you on the excellent prospects for
a successful meeting on this, its twentieth
year, and predict that a long and useful
career yet remains for the Society for the
Promotion of Agricultural Science.
W. J. BEAL.
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, MICH.