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Agriculture, 1906–1907, is as follows (being a total gain of 34 over the previous year):

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The distribution of registration in the winter-courses is as follows:

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The year has witnessed the foundation of five scholarships in the College of Agriculture by Dr. Charles H. Roberts of Oakes, Ulster County, New York. The endowment of $30,000, on which these scholarships are founded, was given to the University without solicitation, the donor feeling that something should be done to aid struggling country youth in the effort to secure an education that shall prepare for country living. The gift is made in recognition of similar aid that the donor received in his youth that enabled him to pursue studies in the Albany Medical College. This noble gift is the first permanent endowment in this country, so far as I know, for scholarships in agriculture, and it is especially fitting that the name of the donor should be organically associated with it in the title, "The Charles H. Roberts Scholarships."

The great single event in the College in the past year was the formal dedication of the new buildings on the 27th of April, by the Governor of the State. It is expected that the buildings will all be ready for occupancy by the opening of the college year next September. It must not be understood, however, that the buildings can be properly equipped by that time. The appropriation made by the State will complete the construction, and will provide sufficient furniture and minor equipment to enable us to use the buildings; but it

will not furnish sufficient equipment to make the buildings effective or to enable us to undertake certain important lines of instruction. An item in the supply bill is now pending, providing for an appropriation of $50,000 to complete the equipment and to purchase supplies.

Even when the present buildings are completely equipped, they will not house a modern and effective college of agriculture. It is assumed that the State of New York, entering on the undertaking of establishing and maintaining a college of agriculture, desires to have an institution that will be thoroughly effective and in every way worthy of the State. It becomes the duty of Cornell University, therefore, as custodian of this enterprise, to acquaint the people and the legislature with the additions that are needed from year to year to enable the College to serve the agricultural interests of the State. The responsibility of supplying such additions must rest with the people. Some of the special present needs may be stated:

I. The College is in urgent need of barns. There is no barn on the place that is adequate to its uses, representative of the agricultural affairs of the State, or adapted to the laboratory work of students. The Supply Bill before the present legislature contains an item of $25,000 for barns. If this appropriation is allowed, it will enable us to construct some or all of the following buildings: central or administration barn; dairy barn ; cattle barn; pig barn; sheep barn; poultry buildings or barns.

2. There is urgent need of land. Land is needed for a good modern farm; to afford field laboratory work for students; to provide grounds for experiment; to produce sufficient feed and pasture to maintain the live-stock that is needed for work of instruction and cxperiment; to enable us to have a series of first-class orchards. An entire farm is needed for the Experiment Station. If the land is to be thoroughly effective, it must be close at hand, where it will be at all times accessible to students and staff. The new college buildings are constricted between the athletic fields and Fall Creek. There is no available land north, west or south; and only a narrow and sidehill strip connects us with farm lands to the east. Even at the best, we shall always be handicapped in our position with reference to land. The least extent of good land for our uses should be set at 500 acres; and beyond this figure land will still be needed. This matter is so urgent that I respectfully request that immediate steps be taken to meet it. Even as a matter of investment, the University can scarcely afford to let any opportunity slip of securing lands in its

vicinity. Add to this the ability to control its surroundings, let alone establishing the work of the College of Agriculture, and it would seem that the University should not neglect this phase of its extension. The western institutions are now paying more for land than Cornell is obliged to pay and are considering it wise to purchase freely. The University of Wisconsin has recently purchased for its College of Agriculture nine acres of land within the city limits of Madison for which $61,000 was paid, and thirty-two acres adjoining their present farm for $16,000. This land has been purchased within the last eighteen months. Three years ago sixty acres of land adjoining their college farm were purchased at a cost of $9,000.

3. As soon as we are provided with barns and lands, we should greatly extend our live stock. Because of lack of housing facilities we cannot carry our present stock through next winter. New York is bound to regain its place to some extent in the general production of live-stock. Much of the state is preeminently a grazing region. It produces about one-ninth of the hay and forage of the Union. We are developing sources of supply for the concentrates, or of materials that can be in part substituted for them. There is therefore every reason why we should extend our live-stock interests, and be prepared to use this stock as laboratory material for students and research material for investigators.

4. We need glass houses, compactly built in connection with our new range of buildings, for several departments. Our present houses are old, wholly inadequate, and not now in the place to be most useful. Good and modern glass houses are essential to the work of the department of horticulture. Structures of this kind are also needed for the nature-study or teaching work, some of the agronomy and soil work, entomology, and the research work in the Experiment Station.

5. The poultry sub department needs to be put on its feet. This will require a good building for class-rooms, laboratories, reading rooms and offices, as well as many smaller buildings for the care and rearing of birds of many kinds, and also several acres of good land. The poultry work has amply justified itself both as a means of educating students and as an expression of one of the most important industries in the State.

The above needs are a few of the larger requirements that seem now to be most urgent. Others will come into the prominence of

first importance year by year. Aside from all this, every department needs to be strengthened internally. Inasmuch as this strengthening is contemplated in the maintenance item of $150,000 in the Appropriation Bill now before the legislature, the subject need not be further discussed now.

There are two special timely matters to which attention should be called, the training of teachers for nature-study and elementary agriculture, and the teaching of forestry.

I. Probably the most far-reaching educational movement now in progress is the effort to adapt the rural schools to the needs of the people. One of the great obstacles to the progress of this effort is the almost total lack of teachers who have either any knowledge of the needs of the people or a definite outlook to the work. There is great danger that the present interest in agricultural education may collapse, as similar but smaller previous movements have collapsed, unless a very active effort is made to train teachers for the work. These teachers must be trained in agricultural colleges. At Cornell we already have a beginning for the training of such teachers in our two-year nature-study course. We have taken a leading place in the propaganda for better and more significant rural schools, and it devolves on us to make good the opportunity. The special opportunity just now is the passage of the "Nelson Act" by the last congress, with a clause to the effect that the new funds (amounting eventually to $25,000) may be used for the training of teachers. The advisability, even the necessity, of our taking up this work actively is expressed in the following letter from the Hon. Elmer Ellsworth Brown, United States Commissioner of Education, dated April 9th, 1907:

"I am much concerned with reference to the danger which I foresee of a painful shortage of teachers of agriculture. You well know that we are just now on a wave, and apparently a rising wave, of interest in agricultural education. Seven states have already provided for agricultural high schools; ten states have made provision, by law, within a very few years, for the teaching of agriculture in the elementary schools; in nine states bills have been pending in the legislatures of this present year, providing for the extension of such teaching. At the same time there is no extensive provision making for the training of teachers for such schools. The schools. simply can not be made without the teachers. The only thing that we can expect from such a state of affairs is that this rising wave will, in a few years, become a sharply receding wave; for the public will not continue to take this lively interest in agricultural education of elementary and secondary grade if they find that the subject of agricul

ture is much more badly taught than the other subjects in the schools.

I am extremely desirous of seeing everything done that can be done to avert this danger, and to hold these recent gains for agricultural education, which seem to me in the nature of real gains for our national education. It is fortunate that just at this time the Nelson amendment to the last appropriation bill has made permissive provision for the training of teachers at the agricultural and mechanical colleges. A portion of the new funds, which amounts to five thousand dollars for each state the first year with a cumulative addition of five thousand dollars in each of the four following years, may be used for the training of teachers. It seems to me that, in the institutions which are favorably situated for this work, no better use can be made of the new funds, or at least a large part of the new funds, than to direct them to this purpose. The gravest danger that threatens our agricultural education is, I believe, the danger referred to above, and consequently the best use which can be made of the new funds to save and further our agricultural education seems to me to be the use which I have indicated.

But there is still another point of view that I should like to bring to your attention. It is of the utmost importance that the institutions that are best prepared for giving wise leadership in this matter should take the lead, in order that more backward and less happily situated institutions may have the advantage of their guidance and experience. I very earnestly hope that this view will appeal to Cornell University, as a case noblesse oblige. Cornell has already done so much for the help and improvement of agricultural education throughout the country, that I hope she will not fail to exercise a wise leadership just at this point. It is this aspect of the case that I wish especially to urge upon you in this letter. It is a matter, I believe, of national interest that Cornell should take hold of this new movement strongly and wisely and, by showing how these new funds can be effectively employed for the training of teachers of agriculture, do what perhaps no other institution in the country can do to avert the dangers of the receding wave in this whole movement.

I beg to bring this matter to your very serious attention, and to express the hope that you and the authorities of Cornell University will do all that can be done to turn this crisis of our education to the good of our whole educational system."

I would organize this work by adding at once two or three persons to our staff to handle the general subjects and to prosecute the large extension work that should go with the enterprise; and then arrange for the giving of adaptable technical instruction in the various specific subjects by the regular departments in the College. In this way we could quickly organize and assemble a very strong department for the training of persons to teach nature-study, elementary agriculture and related subjects. The Teachers' College now

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