2. The advantages secured to the college by its connection with Dartmouth, are worthy of particular notice. This connection was proposed on the ground, mainly, that the national gift, in the proportion that fell to so small a State as New Hampshire, was wholly inadequate, of itself, to the founding and sustaining of a college worthy of the name. A small State, according to the Congressional Statute, must have a small allowance; but as New Hampshire needs just as large a sun as the great State of New York or of Illinois, so it needs as it respects the various apparatus of teaching, as large a college. Half a sun does not answer. About the same equipment is required, in other words, for a smaller as for a larger number of students. This view is the more important from the fact, that a small and comparatively poor State like ours, has not the means, like the larger ones, of supplying deficiencies. By the connection with Dartmouth College, however, this difficulty is in a measure obviated. The Agricultural College has access, so far as is necessary, to all its personal and other means of instruction. Grafted into the old olive tree, it partakes abundantly, as our report shows, of the root and fatness thereof. Dartmouth is doubtless in some respects benefited, but the Agricultural College more. The terms of connection have been so carefully adjusted, that not the least friction has occurred - the two have worked together in entire harmony. And the agricultural students, it is believed. have been greatly profited by the broad range of educational association and influence into which they have been introduced. The apprehensions of evil in such a connection which some have entertained, have been happily dissipated; and there is now a general conviction, that for a State like New Hampshire, whatever may be said of the larger States, no arrangement could be better.

3. The establishment of our institution in the State has already exerted an influence favorable to agriculture and applied science generally. We have coöperated variously with the State Board of Agriculture, and we contemplate a larger coöperation in the future. We have analyzed fertilizers, and made experiments in soils and crops. Within a few years past, there has been in our State a marked increase of interest in agriculture; an increase due to various causes, doubtless, but to which the Agricultural College, it is believed, has in a measure contributed. Our institution furnishes the only large and complete chemical laboratory in the commonwealth; and it has done something in the way of supplying the various departments of mechanical industry with educated workmen. It has made, of course,

in these directions, beginnings only. For the expense bestowed on the infant, we do not expect to be remunerated at once by the productiveness of manhood. Yet we see not only what gratifies us for the present, but unmistakable presages of what the future may be.

4. The interest of the State in the college has been steadily increasing. There was at first much doubt about it, entertained, as in other regions, by divers classes. Some were not believers in colleges of any sort. They valued only common schools. The little conduits secured, which carry water through the streets, they cared nothing for the great reservoir. A few academies at most, they judged, would suffice. Others —a smaller number, with somewhat less of narrowness - believed only in one kind of colleges, and that the classical. Let our young men go to these, if they wished to be educated, or let them take a term at an academy. The broad idea of education, as of various types and adjustments-diversified in its adaptations to the various habitudes and life-pursuits of men- they had not grasped. The grand conception, especially, of a liberal and practical education for the industrial classes," so well enunciated and embodied in the act of Congress, authorizing the land grant — a conception so germane to the institutions of a nation of freemen, one fifth of whose entire population are engaged in agricultural, mechanical, and mining pursuits - they were slow to entertain. Some of them thought, probably — like a distinguished opponent of agricultural colleges in another State that the farmers needed no such institutions; that they could get what additional knowledge they required, by attendance at fairs, or by conference with each other. But a change has been taking place in this respect. One of the most successful farmers in New Hampshire, for example, who at first vigorously opposed the college, has become thoroughly convinced of its importance, and is now a member of our board of trustees. That institutions like ours are not antagonistic to the old classical colleges, but rather favorable to them, is becoming more and more the conviction of the friends of classical culture. To that point, as an advocate of classical study, and the head of a classical college, I give my most emphatic testimony. All good and needful forms of education help each other, just as all knowledges help all knowledges. It is a narrow view to think otherwise. And to oppose the idea of a liberal education suited to the great industrial classes - the bone and sinew of our nation, the classes on whose thinking, as well as whose working, hang largely the destinies of the republic - savors of the associations and habitudes of the Old World, rather than of this land of

Here, of

equal rights, of ballot-boxes, and of popular sovereignty. all lands, the plow, the loom, and the anvil should be educated — not merely skilled in a mechanical and servile way. Nor will their education harm, it will help rather, that of the pulpit, the bar, and the professor's chair. Views like these are becoming more and more prevalent in our State. Among the proofs of it, I may cite the fact stated in our report, that our Legislature, with a liberality hardly paralleled in its previous history, has, within the last five years, given $27,000 to the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts.

5. It has been said that few of the graduates of the agricultural colleges, so called, become farmers. A prominent opponent of these institutions affirmed on a certain occasion, it is reported, that only two of all their alumni had engaged in agricultural pursuits. The fact was overlooked in this statement - — as it often is in certain quarters that by the terms of the congressional act, these institutions are not limited to the training of farmers, important though that end is, but are for those also who have the mechanic arts in view nay, for .6 the industrial classes" generally. Not even classical study is excluded. Our own showing as to our graduates, while it refutes, of itself, the affirmation aforesaid, is very satisfactory every way. Of the eight who have completed our full course, five are engaged in farming, two in mechanical occupations, and one is, for the present, teaching. Of the farmers, two have just gone to Kansas, to join a new settlement there, one of them taking the surveyor's instruments which he learned to use in our institution, with the expectation of finding something to do with them there. Of the men in mechanical employments, one has engaged in building, and has just revisited Hanover, to contract for erecting a house for one of the residents, his studies here having prepared him to be his own architect, draughtsman, and superintendent. If an equally favorable report can be made from our sister institutions, there is little occasion, surely, to find fault with the colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts for failing of their proper object.

All which is respectfully submitted,

HANOVER, N. H., April 13, 1874.

ASA D. SMITH, President.

The estimate of $240,000 made in the foregoing circular must have included the value of Conant Hall, Culver Hall, the Conant Fund, the farm, and the national endowment.

The income from tuition was very small, and the only reliable income was that of $4,800 from the endowment. Up to the year 1875 the State had appropriated $15,000 in addition to the $15,000 granted for Culver Hall. The cost of Conant Hall must have exceeded the estimates, and the erection of a large barn was begun in 1874, so that in September, 1876, the college was $7,000 in debt, and made application to the Legislature for further appropriations. In 1877, the State made an appropriation of $3,000 a year for six years. Of this $1,000 a year was to be used towards the payment of the debt; $1,000 a year for the salary of a farm superintendent; and $1,000 a year for the building of a new farm-house. In 1883, the State made an appropriation of $2,000 a year for two years; and in 1885, an annual appropriation of $3,000 was made perpetual.

In August, 1876, Jeremiah W. Sanborn was appointed farm superintendent. In his first report Mr. Sanborn called attention to the necessity of using the farm as an experiment station in order that it might be of the most practical benefit to the college. In that report he gave the results of feeding experiments, and he continued to report similar experiments to the trustees during his connection with the college. The work thus begun has been continued by the present professor of agriculture, Prof. G. H. Whitcher, who graduated while Professor Sanborn was superintendent of the farm.

When the college was opened to students the course of study extended through three years. By a change of the term arrangements of Dartmouth College, the school year comprised twenty-nine weeks in 1871, and twenty-eight weeks in 1872. In 1878, the college year comprised thirtyeight weeks, and was changed to thirty-seven weeks in 1884, or thirty-six weeks besides commencement week. In the fall of 1883 a class was entered for a year of twenty-nine weeks, as preliminary to the three years' course. In 1889, this short. year was lengthened, making four full college years.

When the college was opened, candidates for admission were required to pass examinations in arithemetic, geography, and