DEPARTMENTS AND COURSES OF INSTRUCTION.

Having thus defined the general idea and aims of the University, the Committee suggest the following enumeration of departments, with the courses of instruction in each:

I. The Agricultural Department-Embracing:

1. The course in Agriculture proper.

2. The course in Horticulture and Landscape Gardening.

II. The Polytechnic Department-Embracing:

1. The course in Mechanical Science and Art.

2. The course in Civil Engineering.

3. The course in Mining and Metallurgy. 4. The course in Architecture and Fine Arts. III. The Military Department—Embracing: 1. The course in Military Engineering.

2. The course in Military Tactics.

IV. The Department of Chemistry and Natural Science.

V. The Department of Trade and Commerce.

VI. The Department of General Science and Literature-Embracing:

1. The course in Mathematics.

2. The course in Natural History, Chemistry, etc.
3. The course in English Language and Literature.
4. The course in Modern Languages and Literature.
5. The course in Ancient Languages and Literature.
6. The course in History and Social Science.

7. The course in Philosophy, Intellectual and Moral.

It may not be found feasible to develop all these departments at the outset, but ultimately, even others may be added to those here enumerated.

The following brief exposition of some of the principal courses will exhibit their general scope:

1. The course in agriculture proper may embrace the study of common tillage, arboriculture, fruit growing, cattle and sheep husbandry, veterinary art, agricultural chemistry, and rural engineering and architecture.

Its aim will be to give a practical knowledge of the various kinds of soils, their composition and improvement, by chemical or by mechanical treatment; the several classes of crops, with the preparation of the soil, seeding, cultivation and harvesting of each; the rotation of crops, and preparation and use of fertilizers; vegetable anatomy and physiology, with the classification, values, and laws of growth and culture of the cereals, grasses and other useful plants, together with general botany; fruit growing, and the several modes of propagation, and the production of new varieties; arboriculture, with the nature and value of the various species of ornamental, shade and forest trees, the propagation, growth and care of forests, their importance and value in a prairie country, in their effects upon climate, vegetation and health; animal anatomy and physiology, with a study of the breeds of domestic animals, and their values for the dairy, for fattening, for draught, and for wool or other products, and of the principles of stock-breeding; veterinary art, with the laws of feeding, care and training of the domestic animals; the apiary and poultry yard; agricultural chemistry, applied to the analysis of soils, fertilizers and food, etc.; entomology, especially including the useful insects and those injurious to animal life; meteorology and climatology; rural architecture and engineering, embracing the planning of farm buildings, and the laying out, draining and fencing of farms; political

economy, the laws of production, consumption and markets; real estate jurisprudence, the laws regulating the tenures and transfers of land, and the laws relating to rural affairs; the history of agriculture, and general views of the husbandry of foreign countries. To these studies should be added, either to prepare for the foregoing, or as necessary to complete education, courses in mathematics, language and literature, mental and moral philosophy, logic, history and science of government. The instruction should be partly by text-books, and partly by lectures, enforced by observation and practice in the laboratory, and the various departments of the experimental farm.

2. The course of instruction in horticulture may comprehend most of the studies already described under the course in agriculture, omitting stock-breeding and veterinary art, and adding to the fruit-growing, the culture of the small fruits and culinary vegetables, and the culture of flowers; the construction and management of the hot-bed, the green-house, the grapery, the seed-plot and the nursery; landscape gardening, the laying out and ornamentation of public and private pleasure grounds, parks, cemeteries, etc. The methods of instruction should be like those in the department of agriculture.

3. The courses in mechanics, civil engineering and mining belong, properly, to the polytechnic school. All the fundamental sciences involved in them being taught at the University, these courses may also be developed there. The committee defer the delineation of a course of instruction in this department till the question of the extent of its means of development is settled.

4. Military tactics being specifically required by the act of Congress, the development of this department, to such an extent as may be found practicable, should be undertaken at the outset. While the effect of this department will be to scatter through the State a body of men, so far advanced in military art, that, in case of war, they will furnish skillful officers, ready to drill and lead the volunteer forces of the country, it is the opinion of many experienced educators that the introduction of the military drill and discipline is of positive value for their educating influence. They will materially assist in the government of the institution, and tend to form those habits of order and punctuality, for want of which so many educated men fail of usefulness and success.

It is strongly recommended by eminent military officers, that some simple and tasteful uniform be prescribed for all the students, as the law contemplates and provides; that the organization partake somewhat the military form, and that a daily drill be had in military tactics. The uniform would not be more expensive than ordinary clothing, and its use would repress extravagance in dress, and promote a feeling of democratic equality among the whole body of siudents. It will help, also, to stimulate the virtues of personal neatness and manly courtesy of demeanor.

By frequent rotations in office, and by making those eligible to office who merit it by proficiency in drill, and by good soldierly conduct, a sufficient stimulus would be gained to insure attention, and both the faculties of obedience and command would be developed. Students of the first year might be required to serve in the ranks and as non-commissioned officers, the higher officers being selected from the advanced classes. Some new drill might also be introduced for each advanced class, and thus the interest be sustained.

Besides the field exercises, some elementary text books should be used, and the students be required to read for recitations or for examinations on the general principles of military science.

It is hoped by the friends of military education that provision will soon be made by Congress for the detail of competent officers of the army to act as professors of military science in the colleges introducing it, and that in this way the university may be provided with instructors in this department.

5. The course in chemistry and natural science will embrace the study of analytical and practical chemistry, the analysis of soils, ores, minerals and organic bodies, and the applications of chemistry in agriculture and the arts of dyeing and bleaching, and the manufacture of sugar, salt, glass, etc. It will embrace, also, the more extended and practical study of mineralogy, geology, and natural history in general, with the arts of collecting and preserving specimens, and of arranging cabinets and conducting geological surveys.

6. The instruction in the department of trade and commerce will have for its aim to give students a knowledge of the principles of business, and of the customs and laws of trade-the collection, transportation, exchange and distribution of the valuable products of nature and art. Such knowledge will be eminently valuable to the educated farmer, and is of vital necessity to those who are to be employed in the great commercial branches of industry. The crowded rooms of the commercial schools, meagre and unscientific as the instruction of these schools often is, prove conclusively the felt need of such a department of instruction, and the university would be incomplete in its industrial courses if it should leave this important form of human industry unprovided for.

The studies in this department, in addition to such literary studies as are necessary for the requisite discipline and culture, and such knowledge of natural sciences as may be needful to an understanding of the origin, nature, quality and cost of the commodities, crude and manufactured, known to commerce, should embrace also political economy, the laws of production, exchange and consumption as they affect markets; the theories of banking, insurance, and foreign and domestic exchange; the laws governing importation and exportation, the several classes of imposts, duties, etc., and the theories connected therewith; commercial geography, with the staple commodities of the different regions and nations, their commercial condition, usages and markets; book-keeping in its several forms, commercial customs, papers and correspondence; and finally, commercial law and the history of commerce, with its growth and variations. Such knowledge, while it would make intelligent business men, farmers, merchants and manufacturers, and managers of the great business enterprises of the nation, would help to prevent those ruinous speculations and disastrous failures which spring as often from a pitiable ignorance of the great fundamental laws of trade, as from a willful violation of them.

DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL SCIENCE AND LITERATURE.

The several courses in this department make up the general educational or college course. Their main aim is to furnish such a liberal education as may best fit students either for the mastery of the special courses in the arts, or for the general duties of life. The final composition and adjustment of this central course will demand the most careful consideration. The conflicting views which prevail as to relative values of different branches of learning, and the consequent disposition to scout some as useless, and to magnify others as of overshadowing importance, make it requisite for us to recur briefly to some fundamental principles which ought to control our selection.

The knowledges considered as instruments of culture or education, may be broadly grouped into four grand divisions, as follows:

1. Natural sciences, or sciences of observation and experiment.

2. Mathematics, or the science of imagination and calculation.

3. Linguistic and philological sciences, or the sciences of formal expression. 4. Philosophical and speculative sciences, or the sciences of consciousness and reflection.

Each form of knowledge affects culture by two separate methods. First, by the kind and extent of the exercise its study affords the mind, and, secondly, by the exciting and stimulating effect of its proper ideas. Some studies are chiefly valuable for the former, and others for the latter use.

The natural sciences, or sciences of nature, embracing natural history, chemistry, natural philosophy, geology, physical geography and uranography, especially exercise and cultivate the powers of observation, classification and inductive reasoning. The mathematical studies, embracing both pure and applied mathematics, exercise and develop the capacity to form and combine abstract conceptions, and cultivate the deductive reason. They also promote habits of mental concentration and continuity of thought.

Linguistic studies educate the discriminative judgment, and develop the power both of the expression and reception of thought. They train, also, the faculty of discursive reasoning, and help to give to the mental action a precision and clearness not otherwise to be gained.

The philosophical and speculative sciences, embracing mental and moral philosophy, and historical and social science, address themselves to minds already well matured, and powerfully exercise the reflective faculties. They especially develop the habit of looking for the fundamental and essential, in facts and things; of investigating the real nature and causes of social and vital phenomena, and of that reasoning from the contingent and the probable, which goes among us by the name of "common sense."

If we turn now to note the other educational force found in these several classes of knowledge—the stimulating power of their proper ideas—we shall find an equal diversity in the kind and degree of their influence; the philosophical studies being, to the majority of mature minds, the most stimulating, and the mathematical the least.

Natural science gives us a knowledge of physical facts and phenomena, and of the great forces and laws of nature underlying these. This knowledge has in all ages stimulated the most eager curiosity, and awakened the spirit of inquiry into physical causes. It has also excited the most wild and extravagant speculations.

The mathematics afford us only the knowledge of the abstract relations of quantity and number, and of certain formulas of analysis. It is by its problems that this science excites the mental activities. Its ideas lie mostly inert in the mind, except when wanted as instruments of calculation.

Language, like mathematics, is mainly concerned with relations; but it is with the relations of ideas and thoughts in all departments of knowledge. The study of language is the study of the connections, as well as of the expression, of thought. Grammar, as J. Stuart Mill has justly observed, is "incipient logic." But language is the instrument and the store-house, as well as the vehicle of thought. It is full of history, philosophy, science and poetry. It powerfully stimulates the thinking

processes by the facilities it affords for the manufacture as well as the commerce of thought.

But no knowledge so profoundly stirs and stimulates the human mind as the great questions with which philosophy and history have to do. These questions come down to us from those great central heights of truth, unattainable, it may be, in their heaven-piercing summits, but still irresistibly attracting all great thinkers, and calling for the mightiest efforts of the human intelligence in the struggle to master their mysterious and still unsolved problems.

It seems too obvious to need further argument that a true educational course must include these four classes of studies, and that if we would send forth a body of thoroughly educated agriculturists, to stand as the peers of the educated men found in other professions, we must give our students the benefits of a course with its full proportionate measure of each of these elements. "It is an ancient and universal observation," said that great thinker and teacher, Sir William Hamilton, "It is an ancient and universal observation, that different studies cultivate the mind to a different development; and as the end of a liberal education is the general and harmonious evolution of its faculties and capacities in their relative subordination, the folly has accordingly been long and generally denounced, which would attempt to accomplish this result, by the partial application of certain partial studies." Testimony could be multiplied on this point from the world's greatest thinkers.

It is not necessary that all the branches in each of these great classes of studies be included in the course. Provided that each class is represented in something like its due proportion, we are at liberty to select of two kindred studies, of nearly equal disciplinary power, that one which most conduces to the special uses we have in view. In making up a course for the Industrial University, we may wisely and safely depart from the common college curriculum; and, without losing any of its real advantages, may gain much special assistance for our industrial courses.

STUDIES OF THE UNIVERSITY COURSE.

In Physical Sciences, the course should embrace botany, zoology, mineralogy, chemistry, geology and physics, not in the stinted measure and nearly useless manner in which they are usually taught, but with such extent and thoroughness as shall give students a practical comprehension and knowledge of each. The scientific farmer or mechanic should be a good naturalist.

In Mathematics, beside algebra and geometry, the student of agriculture needs trigonometry and land surveying; while the mechanic and civil engineer require also analytical geometry, mechanics and the calculus. These studies, therefore, should find place in this general course.

In Language, the course should embrace a thorough study of our own language, its rhetoric and literature.

Of Modern Languages, it should include the French and German, taught with such thoroughness that the student may read them with ease, and converse in them with some facility. The scientific agriculturist ought to be able to avail himself of the fresh discoveries of the French and German men of science. He is shut out from the best scientific thinkers of the age, and from many of the best sources of knowledge, if he can not read the languages of France and Germany. And the prevalent use of these languages in our own country, among large masses of our population, gives to their study an additional value.