demands in the way of additional instructors and other necessary means to the end, a sum of at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be needed, and that, until the funds can be increased by this amount, it would not be in accordance with the best wisdom to make this change. The end is a desirable one, but the movement towards it should he sure and safe. In connection with this prolongation of the course of study, or even before it shall be realized, and as preparing the way for it, the addition of further laboratories and lecture-rooms, already alluded to, will be very desirable, and even essential.

George J. Brush, director of the Sheffield Scientific School, makes the following statement as to its status:

"The Sheffield Scientific School is a part of Yale University, having the benefit to a greater or less degree of its libraries, scientific apparatus, grounds, buildings, etc., and it is under the general management of the president and fellows of the university. The State of Connecticut gives us the income derived from the amount realized from the sale of lands granted by Congress in 1862; this income is now $6,750 each year. We maintain in the Sheffield Scientific School sixteen (16) professors who devote their whole time to its interests, and besides we employ fifteen other instructors in various subjects taught in the school. This year the amount paid out for salaries of professors and instructors in the Sheffield Scientific School will be $57,550, and our general expenses amount to about $7,000, making a total of over $64,000; and that does not include the cost of management and maintenance of the libraries and museums of the university, the advantages of which we share in common with other departments of the institution.' The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi was opened in 1880. From the beginning the board of trustees determined to make all instruction subserve the leading object defined in the land-grant act, viz, the "promotion of agriculture and the mechanic arts."

Recognizing that the former was, and for many years must continue to be, the main ́ interest of the State, and seeing "the needs of an improved system of agriculture," they concentrated their efforts first of all upon the agricultural department.

The success of the college upon the plan indicated gives particular interest to the report of its operations.

In addition to the college building, professors' houses, etc., the college possesses a wellstocked farm of about two thousand acres, chemical laboratory, and valuable scientific apparatus.

Instruction in the department of agriculture embraces the lectures of the cla-s-room and the "knowledge gained by the student in the regular work of the field and in an intimate association during his whole course with the large and well-equipped farm." The college provides for the student not merely experiment work, but a business farm. He not only has the advantages offered by an experimental farm, but he helps "to cultivate crops varying in extent from ten to one hundred or more acres.''

A special course in dairy husbandry is provided, with facilities for practical work in the creamery.

In the department of horticulture instruction is also carried on by lectures and garden work.

In their report, dated July 6, 1887, the trustees state that "the real productive value of the farm has about doubled. This farm has not received a cent from the college fund in three years and annually clears a profit which has been invested in improvements and stock.

"For the support of the college for the years 1886 and 1887, the Legislature appropriated $50,000; for these two years the college share of the interest on the land-scrip fund was $9,857; total receipts for the two years $59,857, making for each year $29,928, in round numbers $30,000. During that time the college had 691 students in attendance. Many were turned away in 1886 for want of room to lodge them, and in 1887 as many were turned away as were received, for the same reason."

The actual annual expenses of a student attending the college are estimated at $124.10, excluding all clothing save the uniform. In the Sophomore year this amount is increased by $12 for chemicals. This amount may be reduced by the labor of the student. The annual cost to the State for each student exclusive of the amount paid them for labor is estimated at $232.46.

The trustees find upon inquiry that about fifty-six per cent. of those who have attended the college are engaged in farming.

The land-grant colleges in the group of States formed out of the North-West Territory, with those of Iowa and Kansas, have given special prominence to the agricultural and industrial features contemplated in the land-grant act. The reports of successive years show continuous progress in these respects. As facilities for preparatory instruction are multiplied, the colleges are relieved of elementary work.

Iowa Agricultural College makes a report to that effect the prosent year, the preparatory class having been discontinued in 1887.

The Michigan Agricultural College is enlarging its facilities in the direction of the mechanic arts without diminishing at all the strength of its agricultural department. Experimental work for the promotion of agriculture and horticulture has been from the first a prominent feature in its course of training. Extensive laboratories in the different departments enable the institution to enter on a series of experiments "to be prosecuted systematically and continuously from year to year. The results of these experiments are published in the monthly bulletins and in the annual report of the State Board of Agriculture."

Purdue University, La Fayette, Indiana, under the vigorous presidency of Dr. James H. Smart, maintains the standards which have placed it among the leading institutions of its class in the country.

The agricultural and mechanical departments are here equally developed. In the former the endeavor is to give complete instruction in the sciences underlying agriculture, to incite students to make original investigations in those sciences, and to afford them opportunity for witnessing and conducting experiments in every department-of agriculture directed to the improvement of its processes and the increase and improvement of its products. The appliances for this part of the work include a well-managed farm, experimental field, orchard, greenhouse, cabinet collections, and laboratories. The mechanical shops of Purdue University are among the best in the country. As an evidence of the practical character of their work, may be mentioned the recent construction of forges and other equipment for the new shops of the Alabama Polytechnic. Two States of the South Atlantic section, viz, Maryland and Virginia, and three of the North Atlantic, viz, Maine, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, have established distinct colleges of agriculture on the land-grant fund.

The chemical department of the Maryland College has been recently thoroughly reorganized and supplied with new quarters and equipment.

The Pennsylvania State College offers three general and six technical courses. The former include a general course in agriculture adapted to the wants of those who wish to begin the study of the subject immediately after leaving the public schools. The technical course in agriculture makes full provision for instruction in the sciences related to that art, including laboratory work and experimental work on the farm, orchard, vineyard, etc. Notwithstanding the excellence of the course and the very complete facilities for its maintenance the number of students entering this department is small. The Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, reports a year of exceptional prosperity.

In the matter of instruction, the experiment was made of inviting gentlemen not connected with the college to lecture on special topics, the lectures being followed by a general discussion, in which the students participated. Of thirty lectures delivered in this way, fifteen had direct reference to farm, garden, and dairy matters. The remainder were on subjects of general science.

An interesting event in the recent history of the college was the celebration. June 21, 1887, of the twenty-ûlth anniversary of the passage of the land-grant act. Commemorative addresses were made by Dr. Charles Kendall Adams, president of Cornell University, by Hon. Charles G. Davis, and by Hon. Justin S. Morrill, to whom the country is indebted for the passage of the land-grant act.

The report of Dr. Francis A. Walker, president of the Massachuset's Institute of Technology, for the current year is replete with valuable information and suggestion.

The fifty-eight graduates who received the degree of B. S. in May, 1887, found easy admission into the several industrial professions. Dr. Walker says:

"In either chemistry or civil engineering it would have been practicable to place twice as many men as were available in eligible professional positions between the close of the past and the opening of the present year. So great was the demand for members of the graduating class that it was for the first time found impracticable to fill all the vacant assistantships in the several laboratories from our own numbers, and we were obliged in two cases to send to other institutions for men to take these positions, and, in a third case, to appoint one of our special students, not a graduate."

The opening of the school year of 1857-88 witnessed large additions to the number of students, the aggregate being 819 as against 738 the previous year. Omitting, as is usual, the students of the Lowell School of Practical Design and the students of the High School of Mechanic Arts, the number is 720, as against 637 the previous year. As compared with 1877-78 the increase in number of students is above two hun fred and seventy per cent.

"If this remarkable increase,” observes President Walker, "had been secured by any lowering of the standard of scholarship, any surrender of the requirements for admission, for continuance in the school, or for graduation from it, that increase of

numbers would not be to me a subject of pride or pleasure; but when I consider that this increase, to nearly fourfold the number nine years ago, has taken place coincidently with a steady advance in scholarship; that these great bodies of students have come to us well knowing that the Institute is a place for hard study, and cheerfully accepting the conditions which we impose; this, I confess, appears to me a proper subject for congratulation. Not only so, but this readiness and eagerness on the part of so many young men to undertake severe and protracted courses of study, regarding which there can be no pleasing illusions, and which require the entire devotion of time and thought and strength for four years, affords a most gratifying indication of the essential manliness of young men.

"Our experience, at least, furnishes no support to the view that, in order to make a school popular, the requirements for admission or continuance must be placed low, or, if the theoretical standard be high, administrative concessions must be freely made to the spirit of indolence or frivolity, or to the demands of sport or of society. Not only is it true that students, in increasing numbers, come to the Institute in spite of its reputation for hard work, but it is not less conspicuously true that, within the Institute, the students, by a very decided preference, select those courses which are recognized as involving the greatest amount of study and practice. It is also true that within the several courses those options which offer the largest capabilities are those most generally chosen."

Of the total number of students 59.6 per cent. are from Massachusetts, 13.6 per cent. from other New England States, and the remaining 26.8 per cent. from outside New England.

As regards the ages of students upon entrance, the average for the present year is found to be eighteen years five months and seventeen days.

For several years there has been a steady advance in this respect, concerning which President Walker observes:

"This must be regarded as a proper subject of congratulation, when consideration is had of the nature of the work at the Institute, and the immediate entrance which it affords into professional practice.

"It is true that the postponement of the age of entrance has of late caused some apprehension on the part of those who direct the classical colleges of New England, and that serious consideration has been given to various proposed means of meeting this tendency, but their problem is not our problem. In the case of students graduating from classical colleges, there is generally to follow a course of two or three years in professional schools, whether of law, of medicine, or of divinity, which is in turn to be followed by a longer or shorter period--sometimes a long and weary one-of waiting for professional practice. Under these circumstances it is undoubtedly a hardship that the age of graduation with the Bachelor's degree should be postponed beyond the twentyfirst, much more beyond the twenty-second, year of life. It is unquestionably true that a young man who commences the full, busy practice of his profession before he is twenty-five years of age has an advantage over one commencing at a later period in the matter of freshness, spontaneity, hopefulness, and enthusiasm.

In our case the relations of instruction to professional practice are altogether different. A young man who has pursued one of our courses with credit may, if he pleases, enter into the practice of his profession the day after he graduates, often with a choice among several positions offered him. In these circumstances graduation at twenty-two years must be regarded as more fortunate than graduation at an earlier period, while twenty-three or twenty-four years can not be considered as in any sense excessive."

The teaching staff of the institute continues to increase, numbering seventy-five members as compared with sixty-nine in 1886-87. The increase during the decade has been 76 per cent.

By reference to Table 55, Column 31, it will be seen that the productive fund of the Institute is exceeded by that of eight other colleges there tabulated.

In the report for 1886 the president stated that it would require half a million of dellars for immediate and imperative needs, and that it would take a milloa to place this institution in as good a financial condition as the poorest school of its rank in the United States.

During the present year one hundred thousand dollars have been received by bequest of Richard Perkins, Esq.

The appeal to the Legislature for two hundred thousand dollars was met with the appropriation of half the sum, coupled with two conditions: first, that one hundred thousand dollars from other sources should be added to the funds of the Institute prior to first payment to be made from the treasury, and secondly, that twenty free scholarships should be established and maintained in the Institute upon specified terms.

The first condition has been complied with, largely through the devoted and self-sacrificing labors of Mr. William Endicott, Jr.

The second condition it was found would impose too heavy a burden upon the finances of the school; it therefore seemed best to the executive committee and the finance committee not to draw the first instalment of the State grant until further efforts shall be made to secure the grant of the additional one hundred thousand dollars asked for.

"Should this be secured," says President Walker, "the Institute of Technology will, for the first time, be in a condition to meet its current expenses out of its annual receipts. Such a result would not avoid the necessity for large additional endowmentsfirst, to secure the school against calamity or reverses of fortune; and, secondly, to provide for a continuous future enlargement and improvement of its various services and departments, to meet the ever-growing demands for technical instruction; but it would mark a very important epoch in the history of the Institute of Technology, and would bring an unspeakable relief to the officers and teachers who have so long in penury and straitness of means held up the standard of scientific instruction here amid difficulties and discouragements neither small nor few."

DEPARTMENTS OF STATE UNIVERSITIES ENDOWED WITH THE LAND GRANT.

The fifteen departments of State Universities or other institutions that have received the benefits of the land grant, like the independent colleges of the same class, show various stages and kinds of development. In every case, however, there is the evident intention to carry out the purpose of the act as completely as possible under the existing conditions.

While experience seems to indicate that technical training is most successfully pursued in schools organized for that special work, it is certain that the scientific departments endowed by the land grant are proving themselves to be invaluable agencies for the promotion and diffusion of scientific knowledge and for the training of teachers, investigators, and scientific specialists.

It is further noticeable that in several instances the departments have developed into highly specialized schools in which the industrial applications of science have full representation. This is emphatically the case with the Rutgers Scientific School, a department of Rutgers College, New Brunswick, N. J. This school offers the following courses of study: A course of four years in civil engineering and mechanics; a course of four years in chemistry and agriculture; a special course of two years in agriculture; and post-graduate courses. Abundant provision is made for laboratory, farm, and field

work.

The University of Nebraska includes an "Industrial College," with courses in agriculture and civil engineering. Plans for a veterinary school have also been formed.

The scientifle department of the University of California embraces five colleges, as follows: College of Agriculture, of Mechanics, of Mining, of Civil Engineering, of Chemistry.

Each of these is abundantly supplied with laboratories and other material appliances for instruction.

In addition to the ample provision for observation and practice possessed by the colleges themselves, the opportunity afforded by the great industrial resources and enterprises of the State are made available to the student by organized visits of inspection. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, the surveys and operations of United States engineers in the harbors of the coast, and the extensive works of the hydraulic mines are all used for illustration and instruction.

The University of Minnesota has been specially mindful of the provisions of the land grant in its application of the fund.

With respect to agriculture, the report of the regents for 1887-88 states that the board has, "in good faith, from the first, made ample provision to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture, and has established a course known as that of the college of agriculture. It is not to be disguised that this course has not been valuable to the industry for which it was intended, but for what reason it is not necessary here to

consider.

"Yet, while very few have pursued this course and taken its degree, it would be unjust to assume this as the measure of the contribution which this university makes to agriculture as compared with other institutions known only as agricultural colleges, inasmuch as the subjects of English, mathematics, and the natural sciences, which in the latter are accredited to the agricultural course, are in our university pursued as thoroughly in either of its several courses. Hence we may in fairness ask the friends of agriculture to examine the generous provisions made for the departments of natural history, botany, and geology in the museum and science hall, the last building erected by special appropriation of the Legislature."

The college of mechanic arts has been highly prosperous. "A course in electrical engineering leading to the degree of bachelor of electrical engineering was added at the

beginning of the year 1887-88; the artisans' training school was reorganized and named 'the school of practical mechanics and design;' a new course in the care and management of engines and boilers was added; also a new course in designing and wood carving."

The University of Wisconsin has become a recognized force in the promotion of all the various industries of the State. The president reports that "A chair of agricultural physics has been recently established and work inaugurated in it. This chair contemplates both instructional and experimental work, and will constitute a factor of both the agricultural college and the experiment station. This important department of agricultural science has not received the definite recognition which it unquestionably merits, this being the first chair of this kind, so far as known, yet specifically established." The report further states that "the new science buildings have been completed and now afford accommodations unsurpassed in most respects, quite unequalled in some particulars." "Large invoices of physical engineering and other apparatus, very carefully selected from the most approved manufactories, have been received. Typical collections representative of mineralogy, petrography, geology, Zoology, and botany have been purchased. Judicious selections of laboratory manuals and treatises essential for reference have been purchased for the laboratories."

"One of the most important phases of the recent growth of the university has been the developments of the departments of original investigation and the more explicit recognition of research and of the dissemination of new and more accurately determined knowledge as one of the important functions of the University. The two departments, the Washburn Observatory and the Agricultural Experiment Station, which are devoted almost exclusively to the increase of knowledge, have been provided with additional force and facilities and research has become a factor in several of the other departments."

Nine fellowships have been recently established. "One of these has been founded by the generosity of the Hon. John Johnston, of Milwaukee, in the appointment of candidates to which preference is given to residents of Milwaukee County and to those exhibiting ability and promise in the departments of mechanic arts."

REMARKS ON TABLE 56.

Table 56 presents the summarized statistics of thirty schools of science not endowed with the land-grant act.

Four institutions or departments which formerly appeared in this category are not included in the present table. These are the Industrial Institute and College for Women, Columbus, Miss., which has been transferred to Table 44; the John C. Green School of Science, a department of the College of New Jersey; the Scientific Department of the University of the City of New York; and the Pardee Scientific Department of Lafayette College, whose statistics were not reported separately from those of the foundations to which they belong (Table 49).

The Chaffey College of Agriculture, Ontario, Cal., which did not report in 1896–87, appears in the table for the present year; also the Technical School of Cincinnati, Ohio, which was established in 1886.

The twenty-eight schools reporting both this year and last show an increase of nineteen instructors and one hundred and twenty-nine students. Appropriations to the same show an increase of $17,065. Benefactions amounting to $40,465 were received by

eight of the schools, as against $35,260 in 1886-87 distributed among six schools. The total income so far as reported, viz, $547,253, represents twenty-two schools. In the case of schools not giving the total income it has been assumed that the sum of items reported in answer to any of the inquiries relative to income would be the total. Of the entire amount tabulated, 12.7 per cent. were derived from productive funds, 42.31 per cent. from State or municipal appropriations, 16.86 from tuition fees, and 28.13 per cent. not specified.

The schools here classed together differ materially in respect to courses and standards of instructors and general aims. For a particular characterization of each the reader is referred to the Commissioner's Report for 1886-87.