excess, or if work is desired, an excess of flesh-forming foods. If the weight of an animal be taken, and all it eats and drinks for a period be weighed, and at the end of the period the animal be weighed again, it can be determined exactly how much the animal has assimilated from its food. If, then, the food be analyzed, and also all the excreta of the animal, it can be determined just how much of the flesh-forming and heatgiving elements the food contained, how much was digested, and how much voided unused. This, of course, will give the facts only for that particular animal under the particular conditions obtaining, but in the course of time a large number of such experiments have been made at different places and with different foods and animals, from all of which an average can be had which should show very nearly the feeding value of the food in question. At this point exact knowledge stops, and the result is ready to be turned over to the farmer to be used in the light of his own observation and common sense with his own stock. The result is found to be a large saving in the cost of feed per pound of weight gained, or per horsepower of work done. Those who employ these methods can do work or produce meat or milk or wool cheaper than those who do not use them. In like manner all farm operations are experimented upon and tested by exact methods for the benefit of the farmer. Forage and other plants are tested for their food or other value, and new plants as to their adaptability to soil and climate. The effects of fertilizers are also closely tested and different methods of intensive culture.

The experiment stations are among the most valuable of the educational agencies which the public puts at the disposal of the farmer. Their means are limited, and no station can do all the desirable things at once, but gradually an immense fund of accurate information is being gathered by the different stations in this country and Europe, all of which is made available to the agricultural world. Most stations send their bulletins freely to all applicants, and all stations do so to applicants within their own states. The farmer, however, must apply for the bulletins, and, to be benefited, must study them after he gets them, and make use of their lessons. The number who as yet do this is extremely small as compared

with the whole number of farmers, but is rapidly increasing. Those farmers who live near enough to their stations to make them an occasional visit, can benefit still more from them if they will only ask questions. What they will see there will be mostly new to them, for the stations do not spend money in finding out what is known already. A visitor, therefore, who merely passes through without inquiry is not likely to learn much. He will not understand what he sees, and possibly will imagine that the station men are also working in the dark, in which he will be wholly wrong. I do not think the station work is usually well appreciated by farmers living nearest the stations.

Akin to the bulletins of the Experiment Stations are the publications of the Department of Agriculture at Washington. The greater part of these are prepared in a popular form for general use, and are distributed free upon application to the Secretary of Agriculture at Washington. Some, however, are sold at the cost, as fixed by the public printer, and are obtained by inclosing the price to the Superintendent of Public Documents at Washington. None of the documents are sent regularly, as they appear, to any address, except a monthly list of publications, which is mailed regularly to all who request it of the Secretary of Agriculture. From this list the farmer can see what the nation has published for his benefit, and by application can obtain what he desires.

These publications of the Experiment Stations and the department are among the most available sources of information for farmers. They are supplemented in many, and perhaps all states, by the publications of State Boards of Agriculture, Horticulture, Dairying, and similar official bodies, all of which are always mailed free to residents of the state. It is the part of a live modern farmer to know the exact places from which this information is to be had as it appears, and to apply for it and make use of it. Great sums of public money are spent yearly for the benefit of the farmers. The information supplied is authentic and useful. No other industry receives any such assistance from the public, and thus far the hardest task of all has been to get the mass of farmers to take and use the information which is supplied to them without price.

W

CHAPTER IV.

SPECIAL AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS.

E have seen that the office of the Agricultural College is to equip students to deal with all agricultural problems. While much practical information is acquired and assimilated, that feature is necessarily subordinated to the main object. We have now to note how the power generated in the college is to be transmuted into work on the farm.

The most important of the special schools of agriculture are what are known as "short courses" conducted at the university itself. These courses vary in length from twelve weeks to two years. No special preparation is required for entrance, nor do they lead to any degree. Certificates of work done are often, and perhaps usually, given to attendants, who may use them for what they are worth. The object of these short courses is to convey to working farmers practical information which they can use in their business. It is not attempted to equip students to test the accuracy of the information given them or to fit them to deal with all contingencies as they arise. Much of what is taught must be accepted on trust. Students desiring to inform themselves in regard to special branches of agriculture are given special facilities. The students are assumed to be mature enough to know what they want, and they are helped to get it. For the longer courses a special line of work is laid out, calculated to meet the wants of the majority, but up to the limit of the strength of the teaching force, individual work is assisted. If one is anxious to qualify himself to become a horticultural inspector, he may learn more about insects, pests, and fungous diseases than a full graduate will know; if he is or expects to be a grain farmer, he will learn about smuts, the Hessian fly, the characteristics of the different varieties of the various

grains, as they are grown throughout the world, the special uses to which each is adapted, their relative value in the market, and whatever else may be found helpful to the grain farmer. In the same way desired special information is given in all branches of the farming industry. In most cases I think that the students in shorter courses are expected to reduce by specific study their general knowledge of the nature and properties of soils to some exactness, and especially to learn definitely how water acts in the soil, and how plants are constructed and grow, but in general the object of the shorter course is to give to the student such knowledge as he can at once put to evidently profitable use, as, for instance, the care and management of dairy machinery, the testing of milk and its manipulation so as to save as nearly as possible all the butter fat, the principles of feeding, and simple methods of testing its results, the nursing of sick animals, and the like.

To many students perhaps the best thing which the shorter courses gives him is something which he did not come for, and that is some notion of the immensity of what he does not know. When once a young man has perfectly acquired this notion, he is in a way to get on, for he is then likely to begin to learn from everything he sees.

The other special schools directly connected with the College of Agriculture are those in which practical instruction. is given by practical men to students of special branches of agriculture. Of these the dairy school is the most common, and, indeed, almost the only one of this class of schools as yet established. In the dairy school it is possible to reproduce the exact conditions of farm life. The school dairy is exactly like any other good dairy, and students who themselves feed and care for the animals by what are said to be approved methods, can see whether or not these methods actually produce the better results which are assumed for them. Outside milk is delivered just as it is to other creameries, which the students themselves can test, and by reference to the books can see whether and how well good milk and good methods pay. They can learn to judge very exactly of the value of cows for the dairy. They can learn the most economical methods of

handling milk in the production of butter and cheese, and how to properly care for machinery. They will not learn much. about bacteria, but they will learn a great deal about their effects, and how to encourage the good and repress the evil in the process of ripening butter and cheese; and this knowledge is all that the practical dairyman requires. Finally, as his product is sold, he will learn, in marketing, exactly what customers think of it.

His instructors in the art will be experienced working dairymen, who make their living by that means, and can make it anywhere. With that instruction he will receive regular lectures from the scientific staff, on the principles underlying the art which he practises, which will put him in a way to get the most profit from his experience at the school, and subsequently in the dairy where he is employed. It is by the dairy school that all the world-renowned dairy districts have attained their excellence. In these districts the graduates of these schools are sought for as workmen and superintendents of creameries. For the latter position, however, while dairy knowledge is essential, it is not all that is required. No one can be a good superintendent of anything who does not possess, in addition to accurate knowledge of the details of the business, executive ability, vigor, and tact. The reward of the dairy school graduate is not munificent, but it is something. With good bodily vigor, it should be $35 per month, or $50 if he boards himself. The "butter maker" of a large creamery should earn $900 a year. There are large creameries which pay $100 a month, or even more, for a manager" or "superintendent," or whatever he may be called; but, as already stated, the requirements of these positions call not only for dairy knowledge, but for other qualifications.

The courses at these dairy schools greatly vary. In some of the newer states a single winter course of three months is' all that is attempted. The Wisconsin school, than which there is no better in America, requires attendance at one winter course, then a summer's practice in the dairy, then another winter course, and the final certificate is not given