Part 1 of Table IX relates to the colleges endowed by the national land-grant. The number of these reporting was 39; number of instructors, 399; number of students, 4,911; of students in regular course, 3,414; in special courses, 392; in post-graduate courses, 67; and in preparatory course, 1,038.

Part 2 of Table IX relates to schools of science not so endowed. The number of these reporting, not including the National Military and Naval Academies, was 29; number of instructors, 251; number of students, 3,542; of students in regular course, 2,982; in special courses, 141; in post-graduate-courses, 31; and in preparatory course, 388. Graduates in 1873.-The number of degrees conferred in course by institutions embraced in Part 1 was 266, (see Table XIII.) The number of degrees conferred in other scientific colleges (Part 2 of Table IX) was 171. Total number of degrees in science by colleges

embraced in Table IX, 437.

For detailed statement of degrees conferred, see Table XIII of the appendix.

For museums and cabinets of natural history, &c., connected with any of these institutions, see Table XVII of the appendix.

Benefactions.-Table XXIV exhibits the benefactions to the agricultural and mechanical colleges and schools of science during the past year.

Date of organization. Of the 39 institutions reported established under the grant, 3 were organized in 1863, 3 in 1864, 5 in 1865, 4 in 1866, 2 in 1867, 4 in 1868, 1 in 1869, 3 in 1870, and 7 in 1872. Six of the colleges have not yet effected their organization and the date of organization of one is not reported. Three States, viz, Florida, Louisiana, and Nevada, have not yet established colleges under the grant.

The agricultural and mechanical colleges (15) in the following-named States have severally independent charters and are not connected with State-universities or other colleges: Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachussetts, (2,) Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.

The colleges on the foundation of the land-grant in these States severally form departments of State-universities or colleges: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, (2,) Missouri, (2,) Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Finances.-An effort was made to present a full statement of the endowments and other property of the colleges, the results of which will be found in the summary. It will be seen that many of them were unprepared to respond fully to these inquiries. It is hoped that future efforts of this nature may be more successful.

Preparatory training.—The statistics show that nearly one-fourth of the total number of students in these colleges were in the preparatory sections. As in the case of the classical colleges in some parts of the country, colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts are also obliged to bear the burden of preparing pupils for the scientific curriculum. This evil, if so it may be called, must be borne with, until either the higher grades of the public schools or the private schools and academies afford the facilities for the requisite preparatory training. The academies and high schools, as will be seen by referring to the tables, report 2,777 in preparatory scientific courses. It may be doubted, however, whether any considerable number of these students receive special preparation fitting them for the colleges. The colleges themselves complain that a large proportion of the pupils sent up to them from the lower schools are poorly prepared; that in some necessary branches they are totally unfitted, and that a great deal of time must be devoted to making up the students' deficiencies in mere elementary branches. (See remarks on this subject under" Secondary schools," p. xxxvi of this report.) There are, however, in dications that in some of the States these hinderances will soon cease to exist. As the number of graduates of the scientific colleges increases, it is to be expected that many of them will take up the business of scientific instruction in the higher grades of the public schools, as well as in the academies and other private institutions. What is urgently needed is a class of schools specially devoted to this preliminary work. Gifts and endowments might be most usefully bestowed for the building-up of institutions which should be

directly subsidiary to the scientific colleges. Already in the New England States, and in a few States outside of New England, schools are being established which shall do for the scientific colleges what their classical preparatory schools are doing for the colleges of liberal arts.

The standard of admission.-The requirements for admission to the colleges having no preparatory course must, in most cases, be called very moderate. These are: In Kentucky, "a fair knowledge of arithmetic, grammar, and elements of algebra. In Maine, "a satisfactory examination in arithmetic, geography, grammar, United States history, algebra to quadratics, and five books in geometry." In the Massachusetts Agricultural College, "a written examination in arithmetic and algebra through simple equations, geography, English grammar, and history of the United States." In the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “a satisfactory examination in arithmetic, (including the metric system of weights and measures,) algebra through equations of the second degree, plane- and solid geometry, French grammar through regular and irregular verbs, English grammar and composition, rhetoric, (so much as is included in the first part of Bain's Rhetoric, or its equivalent,) and geography. In Minnesota, "a satisfactory examination in reading, writing, spelling, English grammar, United States history, geography, arithmetic, and elementary algebra." In the Sheffield Scientific School, Connecticut, a thorough examination in arithmetic, including the metric system; in Davies's Bourdon's algebra as far as the general theory of equations, or in its equivalent; in geometry in the nine books of Davies's Legendre, or their equivalent; in plane-trigonometry, analytical trigonometry inclusive; in geography, United States history, and English grammar, (including spelling,) and in Latin. In this last, six books of Cæsar's Commentaries, or their equivalent-as, for example, the prose of the first portion of Allen's Latin Reader, closing with Sallust-is the least amount which will be accepted in the examination."

Recent organization.-Reference has been made above to the fact that many of the colleges on the foundation of the national grant of 1862 have been but recently organized; 7 of them were opened in 1872, and 18 of the 39 embraced in the table have been in operation about five years only. In several of the States it has not, thus far, been possible to fully equip and organize colleges on account of the political and social conditions resulting from the civil war.

The law of Congress.-There seems to be in the popular mind a misapprehension of the scope of the law of 1862, providing for the establishment of these institutions. The law reads as follows: "The proceeds of the grant shall be applied to the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions." At the time of the passage of the act there were in America very few instrumentalities for adequate instruction in either theoretical or applied science, while in Europe the schools of science had already reached a high degree of development, and were exercising a far-reaching influence, not only on all the professions outside of the theological and legal, and in all departments of arts and manufactures, but also greatly modifying theories and methods of education in nearly all its phases. The international expositions had opened the eyes of our educators and scientists to the inferiority of our country in almost all departments of applied science. Our students were resorting to the European schools for scientific training. Few original scientific works of authority were produced or could be produced here, from the lack of the requisite opportunities for scientific culture. The country abounded in material wealth; it was poor and provincial in the sciences and arts. What was demanded for our country was, therefore, a class of schools or colleges combining in their curriculum means for thorough education in the sciences, both theoretical and applied, and in all the elements of true modern culture. Such appears to have been the intention of the act of

1869. Its spirit was broad and liberal, excluding nothing which experience had shown to be valuable in modern education, while expressly providing for means of scientific instruction in agriculture and the mechanic arts.

Further provisions of the act.-The act provided that "the proceeds of the land-grant should constitute a perpetual endowment-fund, and that no portion of the fund or the interest thereon should be applied, directly or indirectly, to the purchase, construction, preservation, or repair of any building or buildings; that the annual interest should be applied without diminution to the purposes mentioned in the fourth section, except that a sum not exceeding 10 per centum of the proceeds of the land-scrip received by any State might be expended for the purchase of lands for sites or experimental farms whenever authorized by the respective legislatures of said States."

Time required. It is no less true of educational than of political institutions: they are not wholly made; they are mainly a growth. It could hardly be expected that these colleges, having so wide an educational scope, making new demands on subordinate grades of instruction, requiring a new order of trained professors and teachers, besides large outlay in buildings, laboratories, museums, cabinets, libraries, and apparatus, would, under the most favorable circumfstances, attain a very complete development in the course of a decade. There are doubtless great deficiencies to be supplied in many of them. It is believed that these deficiencies are fully recognized by the faculties of the institutions in which they exist and that measures are in progress to supply them. It is for the interest of all that a considerate policy should prevail; that there should be a gradual, sure development, rather than a hasty and forced one. The colleges have apparently pursued this policy, sedulously working to fulfill the end of their establishment and studiously avoiding unfounded claims and excessive pretensions.

Agricultural and mechanic arts.-The colleges which have organized their curriculum claim to have provided for special instruction of students in agriculture and in the mechanic arts. What would constitute a liberal and practical education in agriculture and the mechanic arts? It would probably be admitted to comprise, besides a respectable knowledge of the vernacular and of its literature, a knowledge of the laws of mechanics and physics; a knowledge of natural history and of geology and botany; of experimental chemistry, both organic and inorganic; of engineering and surveying as related to irrigation and the reclaiming of waste lands; of political, rural, and domestic economy. Every one of these branches of knowledge is intimately related to scientific agriculture and the mechanic arts. Certainly the demands of modern science in either or both of these fields far outrun the usual popular and superficial estimate of them. But while science was appointed to be the leading aim of the schools, there was to be no exclusion of other studies which are suited " to bring the light of general culture to illuminate the technicalities of special pursuits." The interest of the country and its honor alike require that the colleges should be thoroughgoing and maintain courses of instruction in all departments of science. Thus only can they meet the exigencies of the times and place our country in these respects on a par with European nations.

Graduates in agricultural science.—The colleges have been sometimes criticised on the ground that their graduates in agricultural science have been comparatively few, or rather that few of their graduates have become practical farmers. If the colleges made no provision or insufficient provision for instruction in this department, there might be some justification for this criticism. It is believed, however, that all the colleges have provided for special instruction in agricultural science and that the graduates therein bear a fair proportion to those in other specialties. Still, it is not quite logical to blame the colleges for the choice of professions or callings of their graduates. No one would think of reproaching the classical colleges because they do not make all their graduates lawyers, or doctors, or clergymen. What has distinguished our country is the freedom which all enjoy in choosing their callings. Guilds, class-prejudices, systems of caste, do not operate here, as in older countries, to keep the sons in the same paths which their fathers trod. All thinkers on political and social science have recognized in this unrestricted freedom one of the chief causes of the wide general intelligence, the intellectual activity and enterprise of our people.

Tendencies of the last thirty years.—In the absence of all statistics on this head it might have been reasonably assumed, in view of the political and social tendencies of the period, that no great number of educated young men would resort to the business of scientific agriculture. Emerson said thirty years ago, at a literary festival, "Whatever events in progress shall go to disgust men with cities and infuse into them the passion for countrylife and country-pleasures will render a service to the whole face of the continent and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life." Whatever tendencies were visible then to such a result, new counteracting events have led away from, rather than to, scientific agriculture. The energies of the nation have been absorbed for the last twenty years, more than ever before, in commercial speculations, in the development of trade and manufactures, in carrying forward vast systems of public works, in the exploration of a continent. All the tendencies of the times have contributed to the concentration of the population in towns and cities. Young men of education have flocked to the market and the forum; neither personal predilections "nor paternal acres " have turned many to the "sanative and tranquillizing influences" of agricultural life. The most eloquent commendations of agricultural pursuits, from Zenophon and Cicero down to our times, have come from those who knew little practically of the mattock and the plow. These things, combined with the large returns on capital, with the comparatively easy condition of the working classes, the semi-commercial spirit of the agricultural class, and the persistent inculcation by some leaders of opinion of the pleasant doctrine that anybody without training is good for anything or everything, have conspired to a tardy appreciation of the value of scientific methods and processes, both in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Especially is this the case where the results of these methods are such as do not quickly obtrude themselves on the mind. The colleges came into being amid these tendencies; they have been obliged in some sense to struggle against them. But there are indications that other tendencies are beginning to operate. The results of scientific methods in their applications to commerce, manufactures, mining, agriculture, &c., are becoming more widely known and more fully appreciated, the demand for men educated in these methods and processes is annually increasing, and a greater number of students are seeking the advantages of the bestappointed colleges.

Gifts, endowments, and proceeds of sale of land-scrip, &c.-Individual benefactions and State- and other appropriations to these colleges are an earnest of the growth of a healthy public sentiment in respect to them. Since their establishment more than $6,000,000 have been given for buildings, apparatus, and for endowments of professorships, scholarships, &c. Individual gifts alone reach the sum of $3,363,350. The amount received thus far from the sale of agricultural-college-scrip has reached the sum of $6,567,720. It will be seen that the colleges in many of the States have received from State-, county-, and municipal appropriations and from individual benefactions sums largely in excess of the proceeds of the land-scrip. The receipts of each, so far as has been ascertained, from proceeds of land-scrip and from other sources, (i. e., donations, appropriations, &c.,) are as follows: Alabama, $216,000 from land-scrip $102,700, from other sources; Arkansas, $135,000 from land-scrip, $217,000 from other sources; California, $750,000 from landscrip; Connecticut, $135,000 from land-scrip, $350,000 from other sources; Delaware, $83,000 from land-scrip; Georgia, $243,000 from land-scrip, $28,400 from other sources; Illinois,* $319,494 from land-scrip, $685,300 from other sources; Indiana, $212,238 from land-scrip, $295,000 from other sources; Iowa,* $11,742 from land-scrip, $21,385 from other sources; Kansas, $190,000 from land-scrip; Kentucky, $165,000 from land-scrip, $210,012 from other sources; Louisiana, $182,600 from land-scrip, $10,000 from other sources; Maine, $116,359 from land-scrip, $133,000 from other sources; Maryland, $112,500 from land-scrip, $45,000 from other sources; Massachusetts Agricultural College, $157,538 from land-scrip, $441,186 from other sources; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, $78,769 from land-scrip, $511,026 from other sources; Michigan,* $207,500 from land-scrip; Minnesota,* $168,681 from land-scrip, $125,500 from other sources; Uni

* Land not all sold.

versity of Mississippi, $75,600 from land-scrip; Alcorn University, Mississippi, $113,400 from land-scrip, $105,000 from other sources; Missouri, $261,795 from donations, appropriations, &c.; New Hampshire, $80,000 from land-scrip, $114,000 from other sources New Jersey, $116,000 from land-scrip, $93,000 from other sources; New York, $602,792 from land-scrip, $1,114,909 from other sources; North Carolina, $135,000 from land-scrip, Ohio, $342,450 from land-scrip, $384,215 from other sources; Oregon, $10,000 from donations, appropriations, &c.; Pennsylvania, $439,186 from land-scrip, $117,699 from other sources; Rhode Island, $50,000 from land-scrip; South Carolina, $130,500 from landscrip; Tennessee, $271,875 from land-scrip, $131,085 from other sources; Vermont, $122,626 from land-scrip, $49,359 from other sources; Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Virginia, $95,000 from land-scrip, $250,376 from other sources; Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, $190,000 from land-scrip, $36,683 from other sources; West Virginia, $90,000 from land-scrip, $183,970 from other sources; Wisconsin,* $228,870 from land-scrip, $40,000 from other sources.

Free scholarships.t-These collegeshave already afforded to a great number of youths means of education, which, without the national grant, they never would have obtained. The number of free scholarships in the colleges already organized is at present over 2,700.

Local influences.-The type of development of the colleges in the departments of science must in some degree be modified by geographical position, natural products, and dominant industrial interests. The colleges in the agricultural States would be likely to have more students and graduates in scientific and practical agriculture; in the non-agricultural States, more of the graduates would be divided among other technical pursuits and professions. Although present statistics are incomplete on this head, it will be seen that they point to this result.

Graduates and former students.-Of students who have been connected with the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama, 58 are reported as engaged in agricultural and mechanical pursuits. The college in Arkansas has no graduates as yet. The Sheffield School of Yale College has educated, in whole or in part, 75 professors in science who are now in places of responsibility in colleges in different parts of the country, besides many who are serving the Government in the Coast Survey, Hydrographic Bureau, National Observatory, and as geologists, explorers, and topographers. Many hundred students have also pursued special courses in this school.

In Delaware, it is estimated that two-thirds of those who have been connected with the college are engaged in agricultural and mechanical occupations. The college in Georgia has as yet no graduates. Of 51 former students of the college in Illinois whose present occupations are known, 30 are engaged in agriculture, 4 in manufacturing, 7 in teaching, 4 in mercantile pursuits, and 6 in law and other professions. The mechanical and engineering departments were slower in developing, and not so large a proportion of the students are yet in the field. Nearly 100 of those who have been students in the college in Iowa are engaged in agriculture. Of those who have attended courses in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, between 40 and 50 per cent. are engaged in agricultural and mechanical occupations. Of the 13 graduates of the college in Maine, 4 are civil engineers, 2 farmers, 1 manufacturer, 1 fish-breeder, and the others are teaching temporarily. Of 34 who left before graduating, several have become farmers, others teachers, &c. Of the graduates of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, 66 are engaged in agriculture and 37 in mechanical occupations. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has graduated 9 in the department of mechanical engineering, 7 in the department of civil and topographical engineering, 8 in that of geology and mining engineering, 8 in the department of mining engineering, 22 in the department of civil engineering, 13 in the department of chemistry, 2 in the department of science and literature, and 1 in the department of architecture. Besides these, a large number *Land not all sold.

+ Doubtless much of the complaint that has been heard in reference to the colleges would never have arisen if the States had restricted a certain proportion of free scholarships to such students only as purposed to devote themselves to practical agriculture.