Report on Present Status of Knowledge Concerning Impact Tests...Hatt. Some Results of Transverse and Tension Tests of Steel Plates...... Hatt. Methods of Testing Paving Brick.. Rattler Tests of Paving Brick... Review of Results on Compression of Wrought Iron.. Report on Strength of Bolt Heads.... Relation of Elastic Limit in Tension and Flexure. Hatt. Hatt. ..Hatt. . Hatt. Hatt. .Hatt. Friction Losses in Locomotives. Determination of Events of Stroke by Indicator. The American Engineer Abroad.-Series. The Arch-Bar Truck... .. Some Unrecognized Forms of Native Trees. Contributions to the Flora of Indiana. VI... .Turner and Hatt. .Miller. Robertson. .Robertson. .Goss. ..Goss. ..Goss. .Coulter. .Coulter. A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and of the Ferns and Their Allies Indigenous to Indiana.. Gifts of Biology to Civilization. A Protolytic Enzyme of Yeast... A Case of Blastomycetes Dermatitis.. A Mould Isolated from Tan-Bark Liquors. Medical Inspection of School Children... . Coulter. .Coulter. .K. Golden. .K. Golden. .K. Golden. .K. Golden. .Burrage. Insects as Factors in the Spread of Bacterial Diseases... ....... . Burrage. Transmission of Disease by Flies and Other Insects.. School Sanitation and Decoration. The New East River Bridge.. . Buriage. . Burrage, with H. T. Bailey. Report on the Elgin, Illinois, Stand-pipe Failure... ...Pence. Waesche. Report of the Committee on Arc-Light Photometry of the National . Goldsborough and Matthews. .Goldsborough. Goldsborough. DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION. The members of our faculty in various departments are constantly receiving requests to furnish expert opinions, to make tests or examinations of material, or to furnish information on a great variety and range of subjects. It is the policy of the University to give generous attention to such requests so far as can be done without interference-first, with the care and instruction of classes, and second, with the prosecution of such researches as may be in hand. So far as such questions relate to the public welfare, the University feels it a duty to render all the assistance possible. Many private requests, which can be answered without special research or investigation, are also given attention without charge. At the Experiment Station, hundreds of letters were answered and great numbers of specimens of insects, soils, plants, etc., were examined and reported upon for the benefit of private parties. The veterinarian was frequently called upon to visit localities where animal epidemics prevail and prescribe relief. At the bacteriological laboratory, there were made for physicians nearly one hundred free examinations of pathological material, chiefly with relation to the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Another large class of requests are purely of a private interest, relating to chemical analysis, tests of constructive materials, of machinery and mechanical devices. Wherever conditions will admit of attention to such requests, a proper fee is charged to cover all expenses to the University. Purdue stands, therefore, in the aspect of an aggregation of trained men and well equipped laboratories which are available, under proper restrictions, to the people of the State for supplying accurate and impartial information on technical and scientific questions. The value to the community of such an institution is not to be lost sight of when considering its other and more important. work and functions. THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE. I wish to call attention to two matters in connection with the School of Agriculture, viz.: In the discussion of the subject, it is well to remember that the problems of agricultural education have occupied the attention of competent people in all civilized countries for a considerable time without their having yet arrived at an altogether satisfactory solution. Any study of the history of the subject shows at once two prominent facts. First, that facilities for technical training in agriculture have been provided in different countries and in all of the States in our own country, to a remarkable extent as regards teachers, equipment, and carefully arranged curricula. Second, that the universal report, even from those localities where the conditions are most auspicious, is to the effect that the utilization of these opportunities, or in other words the attendance upon agricultural schools, is comparatively small. Technical schools established in the interests of the other industries have, in recent years, been thronged with students while the agricultural schools have nowhere been fully attended. The facts will not permit the conclusion that this is due to lack of facilities. The true cause is recognized, by those who have given much attention to a study of the situation, to be the inherent conditions existing in the agricultural industry. One of these conditions is the conservative attitude of the farmers themselves toward the various progressive movements relating to their industry, especially technical education. Until this situation is changed, comparatively few of our youth who go to college will enroll in agricultural courses. One must realize these general facts before he can properly understand the situation with regard to any particular institution. EXISTING CONDITIONS IN THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE. The preceding general statement applies in most respects to the School of Agriculture of Purdue University. The attendance is comparatively small, and I think it can be shown that this is due to the same general causes operating in other States as well as in Indiana. This will be more clearly understood if we inquire carefully into all of the facts concerning attendance, equipment and facilities of the school, inducements offered to students, etc., which I will now discuss in detail. Attendance. The number of students enrolled in the School of Agriculture for the last four years is as follows: 1896-7.. 1897-8. 1898-9.. 1899-00.. 45 60 92 128 The growth is encouraging, but it is noteworthy that it is largely in the short winter course. The proportion of agricultural students to the entire enrollment of the University in these years was in 1896-7. 1898-9. 1899-00. 7 per cent. 12 per cent. This proportion has more than doubled and the actual attendance nearly trebled in the four years. It now is quite as large as that shown in most of the leading State Universities of the country. The actual number of students enrolled in the regular four and two years' courses of study in Agriculture for the year was thirtysix, a number scarcely exceeded in even the largest institutions, or those most favorably known for their agricultural schools. In the point of comparative attendance, therefore, it does not appear that the Purdue School of Agriculture is inferior, but that in fact it. stands well above the average. Courses of Three courses of study are offered. (a) The four Study. years' course of a collegiate character, including a proper proportion of technical studies combined with those of a fundamental nature so as to secure for the student a broad general education, with special training in agricultural sci-· ence. (b) The two years' course, including most of the special agricultural subjects offered in the four years' course, omitting most of the general, cultural studies. (c) The short winter course of eleven weeks, consisting of lectures and demonstrations with laboratory practice, upon special farm topics. These courses are arranged fundamentally upon those lines which have been generally approved in agricultural education, with such modifications as seemed most likely to adapt them to our State. It is significant that the course which is educationally least defensible is the most popular, viz., the short winter course-but this is doubtless true in other fields of educational work. Faculty of Instruc= tion. . Students in agricultural courses receive instruction from forty members of the faculty. Of these instructors, nine teach exclusively in the School of Agriculture and thirty-one teach general subjects to students of all University departments. No other school has so large a number of instructors for its own exclusive subjects as does the School of Agriculture, and, on the other hand, the students of no other school receive instruction from so large a number of teachers as do those in Agriculture. Students enrolled in the four years' course actually spend fully one-half of the hours of instruction with the teachers of general subjects, thus sharing to an unusual degree the advantages of the best instruction given in other schools than their own. Equipment. The following buildings are used exclusively for the work in Agriculture: Agricultural Hall, containing recitation rooms and laboratories in agriculture, horticulture, entomology, botany and veterinary science, the offices of the instructors in these subjects and the offices and laboratories of the Agricultural Experiment Station; Agricultural Annex, a lecture and demonstration hall accommodating one hundred and twentyfive students; the veterinary barn and dissecting room; the dairy, with rooms for milk testing, milk setting and churning, separator room and engine room; five farm buildings, viz., a cattle barn with silo for dairy animals and feeding experiments, a tool barn supplied with a large assortment of modern tools and farm machinery, a storage barn for hay and grain, a sheep barn and a piggery; two |