come from those institutions where the course of instruction is some special branch of agricultural education, as, for instance, the cultivation of meadows, the scientific methods of irrigation, means of reclaiming swamp-lands, the growth of fruit-trees, apiculture, and kindred subjects of vital interest to the farmer. The resulting benefits are illustrated by the fact that in Germany, Belgium and France, where these schools exert a great influence, the lands now produce almost double the amount per acre raised before their institution, while in the United States, where non-methodical methods usually prevail, the annual crops are almost everywhere growing less in average per acre. England presents a

state of affairs similar to that of the countries mentioned, and maintains many colleges devoted solely to agricultural education.

In the United States the same degree of benefit has not as yet attended the establishment of the colleges that has been realized in foreign countries. The governmental aid has been so liberal and abundant as to give them a fair test; yet it cannot be said that they have proved successful, or that the results attained have been wholly satisfactory. Students of agriculture have given much thought and attention to the matter, and are agreed that the instruction given is not sufficiently practical, and does not meet the requirements of the farmer. The graduate is qualified for a position more remunerative than to that of the farm-laborer, but has not that intimate knowledge of farm-life that enables the husbandman to so manage his affairs as to make of the business a success.

Herewith is given a list of colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts endowed by the acts of Congress of July 2, 1862, and Aug. 30, 1890.

Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College, Auburn, Alabama.

University of Arizona (agricultural and mechanical department), Tucson, Arizona.

Arkansas Industrial University, Fayetteville, Arkansas. University of California (agricultural and mechanical department), Berkeley, California.

Colorado Agricultural College, Fort Collins, Colorado. Sheffield Scientific School (Yale University), New Haven, Connecticut.

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Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi, Agricultural College, Mississippi.

department), Columbia, Missouri. University of Missouri (agricultural and mechanical

Montana Agricultural College, Bozeman, Montana. University of Nebraska (agricultural and mechanical department), Lincoln, Nebraska.

State University of Nevada (agricultural and mechanical department), Reno, Nevada.

New Hampshire College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Rutgers Scientific School, New Brunswick, New Jersey. College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Agricultural College of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

North Carolina College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina.

North Dakota Agricultural College, Fargo, North Dakota.

Ohio State University (agricultural and mechanical department), Columbus, Ohio.

Oklahoma Agricultural College, Stillwater, Oklahoma. State Agricultural College of Oregon, Corvallis, Oregon.

State College, State College, Pennsylvania. Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Kingston, Rhode Island.

Clemson Agricultural College, Fort Hill, South Carolina.

State Agricultural College of South Dakota, Brookings, South Dakota.

University of Tennessee (agricultural and mechanical

department), Knoxville, Tennessee.

Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, College Station, Texas.

Agricultural College, Logan, Utah.

Burlington, Vermont.
University of Vermont and State Agricultural College,

Virginia Agricultural College, Blacksburg, Virginia. Washington Agricultural College and School of Science, Pullman, Washington.

department), Morgantown, West Virginia. West Virginia University (agricultural and mechanical

University of Wisconsin (agricultural and mechanical department), Madison, Wisconsin.

University of Wyoming (agricultural and mechanical department), Laramie, Wyoming.

The following list shows the institutions for the education of colored students in agriculture and the mechanic arts receiving the benefits of the act of Congress of Aug. 30, 1890:

State Normal and Industrial School, Normal, Alabama.
Pine Bluff, Arkansas.
Branch Normal College of Arkansas Industrial Uni-

land.

Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, Massa

chusetts.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Mas

sachusetts.

Michigan State Agricultural College, Agricultural College, Michigan.

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Agricultural College for Colored Students, Dover, Delaware.

State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students, Tallahassee, Florida.

Georgia Industrial College for Colored Youths, College, Georgia.

State Normal College, Frankfort, Kentucky. Southern University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, Westside, Mississippi.

Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, Missouri. Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race, Greensboro, North Carolina.

Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina. Prairie View State Normal School, Prairie View, Texas.

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, Virginia.

West Virginia Institute, Farm, West Virginia. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATIONS. Methodical study, under government auspices, of the farmer's problems was scarcely known before the second half of the nineteenth century.

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A hundred years earlier, Arthur Young (See Vol. XXIV, p. 755) conducted, at his own expense, an experimental farm at Stamford Hall, Essex, with results of greater value to Great Britain than to his purse. His travels in all parts of the United Kingdom and in France, and his publications of experiments and observations, showed how great a field of systematic research there was to be possessed. It was not until 1843 that the private experimental farms of Sir John Bennett Lawes at Rothamstead, and of Rev. Mr. Smith (c.f. Vol. I, p. 342) at Lois Weedon, again aroused public attention in any effectual way to the advantages of the methodical study of agriculture. It was obvious, however, that what enthusiastic men of wealth might do in the way of experiment was out of reach of the tenant farmer of that day. If anything were to be done to increase the products of the land, or render farming more profitable for the great body of agriculturists, the government or some powerful organization must intervene. The gradually increasing depression of the farming interest became a matter of political importance, and Parliament, in 1889, created a Board of Agriculture, one of whose principal duties was to collect and diffuse technical information, and it has many of the research functions of the Department of Agriculture in the United States. Still more recently a National Agricultural Union was formed, and it opened a large experimental farm, designed especially to test the raising of crops not generally indigenous, on a scale sufficient to determine their industrial value. While actual experiments in the field, as distinguished from laboratory work, are carried on by the agricultural colleges at Cirencester, Downton and near Carlisle, in England, the chief experimental farm of the realm is that of the Royal Agricultural Society at Woburn, in Bedfordshire.

In France, agriculture is fostered by a special department of state, and it has long maintained sheepfolds and other stock-farms, and carried on experiments pertinent to changing farm problems. In Germany an experimental station was established, in 1851, at Möckern, near Leipsic, in Saxony, from which has grown an important, and perhaps unequaled, system of government experimental

farms.

In the United States the development of these stations was closely connected with the agricultural colleges founded on government land grants. These land grants were made by Congress in 1862, and resulted in the establishment of agricultural colleges, or agricultural departments in some established college, throughout the states of the Union. Some of these colleges had purchased farms, and these necessarily became experiment stations, but each was a law unto itself, both as to the scope and the methods of its work. National legislation to foster these stations, and to promote some sort of system among them, began with an act of Congress passed in 1887. It provided for the establishment of experiment stations in connection with each college, or agricultural department of a college, enjoying the proceeds of the land grants of 1862 and 1867, or that should be established in accordance therewith.

It was further provided that where any state or territory maintained or created two such colleges or experiment stations, the Congressional grant of money made by the act should be divided between them, unless the legislature otherwise directed. A sum of fifteen thousand dollars a year for each state and territory was ordered to be paid out of the United States treasury to officers appointed by law in each state and territory to receive the same, in quarterly installments. To secure uniformity of methods and results in the work of the stations, forms were to be provided by the commissioner of agriculture (now the Department of Agriculture) for use at each, and indications to be given of desirable lines of investigation, and generally he was to promote the purposes of the act by advice and assistOn the other hand, stated reports from each station are required to be made to certain designated officials of the general government, and copies to be sent to every other experiment station. It is expressly stated that the act shall not be held to modify the legal relation between any state or territory and any of the colleges to be benefited. The grants of money named were to become available when a legislature had formally assented to the purposes of the act.

ance.

The objects of these experiment stations are declared to be "to conduct original researches or verify experiments on the physiology of plants and animals, the diseases to which they are severally subject, with the remedies for the same; the chemical composition of useful plants at their different stages of growth; the comparative advantages of rotative cropping as pursued under a varying series of crops; the capacity of new plants or trees for acclimation; the analysis of soils and water; the chemical composition of manures, natural or artificial, with experiments designed to test their comparative effects on crops of different kinds; the adaptation and value of grasses and forage plants; the composition and digestibility of the different kinds of food for domestic animals; the scientific or economic questions involved in the production of butter and cheese; and such other researches or experiments bearing directly upon the agricultural industry of the United States as may in such case be deemed advisable, having due regard to the varying conditions and needs of the respective states or territories."

It was also required that each station should publish reports of progress, or bulletins, at least every three months, and that these documents should be furnished on application to any member of the farming community, so far as the income of the station would allow. At the passage of this act there were 17 experiment stations in existence, in as many states. There are now no states

or territories without them, and in some states there are two. To carry out this act Congress appropriated $585,000 for the first fiscal year. In 1890 further provision was made to increase the allowance at the rate of $1,000 a year for 10 years; that is, until the maximum grant reached $25,000 per annum to each state or territory. Provision was further made that no discrimination of color

should be made by any legislature in distributing the government grants, but that the establishment of separate stations for whites and colored persons should not be held to be a prohibited discrimination, if each shared alike in the bounty.

Under this fostering legislation there has been a great accumulation of information, based upon carefully recorded and tabulated experiments, concerning agricultural entomology, soils, diseases of plants and animals, the relative values of fertilizers, management of crops and live-stock, restoration of wornout lands, drainage, irrigation and methods of farming. Any agriculturist may obtain publications of the stations gratuitously, by writing to the director of the station in his state or territory.

The Department of Agriculture itself carries on laboratory and field experiments, both in Washington and at three or four points scattered in the country, with a view to climatic conditions; but the field-stations thus established are usually maintained by contract with some skillful person or farmer, who undertakes to carry out instructions from the department. These instructions commonly relate to some specific inquiries; as researches upon phylloxera, black-rot, and other obstacles to profitable viticulture, were made at Vineland, New Jersey, as other investigations have been made elsewhere.

Below is a list of the experiment stations established by law existing in the United States in 1895. Their support involves an expenditure of about one million dollars a year, of which one sixth is borne by the several states and territories, and the rest by the general government.

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AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. See FARMERS'

ORGANIZATIONS, in these Supplements.

*AGRICULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. The word agriculture is not found in Shakespeare nor in the Bible. Its first occurrence, so far as is known, is in Philemon Holland's translation of Plutarch's Morals, published in 1603, where reference is made to "agriculture and husbandry." It is also found in Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors, published in 1646, and with increasing frequency from that time to our own. In its primary sense it means merely the tillage or cultivation of the ground, but, like the word husbandry, which it has largely superseded, it is now understood as embracing all the various industrial arts that are employed in the raising and preparation for the primary market both of the cultivated products of the soil and of domestic animals and animal products. In this popular acceptation of its meaning it certainly makes good its claim to be the foundation of human industry and prosperity. As providing in their primary form the means of human subsistence, it gives employment to a large proportion of the human race, and in its later and more scientific application it is laying under contribution departments of human knowledge that less than a generation ago were scarcely recognized as having any connection with it.

HISTORICAL. On the North American continent the beginnings of agriculture were naturally as small as those of colonization. In our own times the United States, after supplying the wants of its own large population, has exported upward of five and one half billions of dollars' worth of agricultural products within a period of ten years, and yet, of all the products that go to the making up of these gigantic exports, only two-maize and tobacco-were found growing in the country on the landing of the first settlers, either in Virginia or on Plymouth Rock. Almost all those numerous products of the soil which now flourish as in their natural habitat, and constitute so large a proportion of the agricultural wealth of the country, have been introduced from abroad. The potato was introduced into that portion of the colony of Virginia which is now North Carolina in the latter part of the sixteenth century. The Mayflower Pilgrims sowed barley, peas and beans, along with the maize given them by the Indians and thenceforth called Indian corn, in the spring following their landing. Wheat, rye and *Copyright, 1896, by The Werner Company.

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oats had already been introduced into Virginia, buckwheat was brought into the country by the Swedes and Dutch, and the year 1628 saw the introduction of hops. In the colony of Massachusetts the cultivation of flax or hemp was made compulsory in 1639, in Connecticut in 1640, and in Virginia, where the domestic manufacture of linen thread was likewise compulsory, in 1662; Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other colonies making similar enactments. As regards farm-animals, the New England colonists imported a bull and three heifers in 1624, and 140 head of cattle in 1629. In 1611, however, or nine years before the landing on Plymouth Rock, 100 head of cattle were imported into Virginia. These are examples of the fragmentary information relative to the agriculture of colonial times that has come down to us with the stories of the early Indian wars, of the religious animosities of fanatics, and of the hardships endured by the settlers. One thing, however, is certain: the colony of Virginia, whether from its earlier establishment or its less rigorous climate, or both, reached a point at which it had products to exchange for those of other countries at a much earlier date than did the colony of Massachusetts. As early as 1648 Virginia was exporting, among other agricultural products, an average of no less than 1,500,000 pounds of tobacco per annum, or enough to load a solid freight train of 45 cars, as we have them to-day. In 1729, 1,813 bushels of flaxseed, valued at the equivalent of $1.14 per bushel, were exported from Pennsylvania to Ireland and Scotland, and within the next 25 years the flaxseed exports of Connecticut alone attained an annual value of £80,000, representing, in all proba- | bility, not far from 400,000 bushels of seed. There was, however, no really important development in the agriculture of this country until after the Revolution, when concerted measures for its improvement were first taken. In 1784, agricultural societies were established in the city of Philadelphia and the state of South Carolina; in 1791 New York followed suit, and in 1792 Massachusetts did likewise. About this period there were many improvements in farm implements and machinery, perhaps the most notable being Whitney's cotton-gin, which gave to the cultivation of cotton in the South the greatest impulse it has ever received, the annual production increasing from 2,000,000 to 40,000,000 pounds within ten years. Before the first quarter of the nineteenth century had passed, the influence of the agricultural newspaper was added to that of the agricultural society, and before 1835 both mowing and reaping machines had been sufficiently perfected to give promise of the revolution they were destined to effect in the saving of labor. This brings us to the period at which a United States census embraced, for the first time, an inquiry into the condition of the agricultural interests of the country. Six successive decennial censuses have since made more or less elaborate investigations of the development of our agricultural resources,—a development that more than half a century ago was beginning to excite the astonishment of the civilized world, and of which it is not too much to say, that during the last twenty years it has consti

tuted one of the most interesting and important chapters in human history.

UNITED STATES FARMS. Nearly 2,000,000 new farms, containing considerably over 200,000,000 acres of land, were added to the agricultural domain of the United States between 1870 and 1890. The total number exceeding three acres in extent (except where five hundred dollars' worth of products had been sold from off the farm during the year) on June 1, 1890, was 4,564,641, containing a total area of 623,218,619 acres, an average of 137 acres each, as compared with 134 acres in 1880,—an increase in average size for the first time in American history. Of this area, 357,616,755 acres were improved, the acreage unimproved constituting 42.6 per cent of the whole, as compared with 46.9 per cent in 1880. It was wholly in the West and South that the large accession to the number and acreage of farms took place between 1880 and 1890, every New England state, together with New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, showed a falling off both in the number and area of its farms. On the other hand, Texas and the Dakotas added over 15,000,000 acres, Nebraska over 11,000,000 acres, Kansas over 8,000,ooo acres, Minnesota and Iowa over 5,000,000 acres, California nearly 5,000,000 acres, and Arkansas nearly 3,000,000 acres to their respective farm areas during the period above mentioned. It certainly did not require the aggravation of an era of diminished exports and unremunerative prices to seriously disorganize the farming interests of the country, in the face of this great and sudden shifting of the agricultural center of gravity. As regards the total number of farms, Ohio is well in the lead, with 251,430, followed by Illinois, Missouri, New York, Iowa, Texas and Pennsylvania, in the order named, and each with upward of 200,000 agricultural holdings. The other extreme is found in Arizona, Nevada, and the District of Columbia, with 1,426, 1,277 and 382 farms, respectively. Of the entire number of farms, 71.6 per cent are cultivated by owners, 10 per cent are rented for money, and 18.4 per cent are rented for share of products. The largest proportion cultivated by owners is found at the two extremes of the country, New England and the Far West, while the largest proportion rented, whether for money or shares, is found in the South; South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi, in particular, having more than half their farms rented. The total value of the farms (land, fences and buildings only) of the United States, as reported to the eleventh census by the farmers themselves, was $13,279,252,649, an average of $21.31 per acre, or $2,909 per farm. Of the farms occupied by their owners, 2,255,789 were free of encumbrance, and 886,957 were mortgaged. Of these holdings, the largest percentages free of encumbrance were, without an exception, found in the South, while the largest percentages encumbered were in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, in which states the number of encumbered farms exceeds that of the unencumbered. The total encumbrance on farms occupied by their owners was $1,085,995,960, or 35.55 per cent of their reported value. The total annual interest charge was $76,728,077, and the average annual rate of interest 7.07 per cent, ran

ging from 5.43 per cent in Pennsylvania to 12.61 per cent in Arizona. The total value of the implements and machinery on farms at the last census was $494, 347,457, an increase of nearly $90,000,000 in 10 years. It is an interesting fact that, notwithstanding the enormous developments that have taken place in Western agriculture, New York and Pennsylvania still lead all other states in this important feature of farm equipment. The latter state, however, is closely followed by Iowa, and it will not be surprising if this last-mentioned great and rapidly growing commonwealth shall have passed the Keystone State in this particular, as it has already done in almost every other relating to agriculture, by the end of the nineteenth century. With one or two exceptions, the Southern states and the grazing states of the Far West appear to be the most poorly equipped in this important respect, many of them having not more than one dollar's worth of implements and machinery for every three, four, or five acres of land in farms.

FARM PRODUCTS. The products of the farms of the United States in the year preceding the census of 1890 were valued by the farmers themselves at no less than $2,460,107,454, and in view of that well-known tendency of farmers to underestimate the quantities and values of products consumed upon the farm, it is not improbable that the figures quoted are several hundred millions too low. A careful estimate of the value of the vegetable products alone for the year 1895 places them at $2,100,000,000, and that the amount would be increased to $3,000,000,000 or more by the addition of the meat, wool, dairy products and poultry, admits of no doubt.

CROPS. Although no other country in the world possesses so great a diversity of soil and climate as does the United States, and, accordingly, none can compare with it in diversity of agricultural productions, the most conspicuous and significant feature of its agricultural development is, after all, its annual production, on a scale absolutely without parallel in the history of the world, of those important products of the temperate zone which constitute the principal food-supply of a large portion of the human race.- Cereals. The total production of corn, wheat, oats and barley in the United States in 1895 was 3,529,757,808 bushels, an amount slightly in excess of the total production of cereals (including rye and buckwheat) at the census of 1890, over 900,000,000 bushels greater than that reported in 1880, and well on toward three times that reported at the census of 1870. The center of cereal-production has not only been gradually moving westward since the first settlement of the country, but it has always been in advance of the center of population, and so far, at least, as the last 50 years are concerned, it has gained upon the westward movement of population with each successive decade. It is now west of the Mississippi River, since not only did the transMississippi states and territories add over 23,000,000 acres to their cereal-producing area between 1880 and 1890, but the states east of the river, so far from keeping pace with this enormous increase, withdrew nearly 2,000,000 acres from cereal cultivation. Of every 100 acres devoted to cereals at the last census,

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51.41 acres were under corn, 23.95 under wheat, 20.20 under oats, 2.30 under barley, 1.55 under rye, and .59 under buckwheat. As between the different states, however, the widest variations obtained, many of the Southern states having almost their entire cereal acreage in corn, while California and Washington had three fourths of theirs in wheat, and Maine, Montana and Wyoming had almost as large a proportion in oats.-Corn. Maize, or Indian corn, was cultivated by the Indians before the advent of the white man. It formed part of the first little patch of ground planted at Plymouth, and its production has increased with the development of agriculture in general, until three times between 1889 and 1896 the annual crop has exceeded two billions of bushels. Its enormous production illustrates, as does that of no other single crop, the wealth of that vast region which, under the operation of our liberal land laws, has been brought under cultivation within the last 30 years. The area devoted to corn in 1895 was 82,075,830 acres, and the production 2,151,138,580 bushels, valued at $544,985,534, as compared with an area of 72,087,752 acres and a production of 2,122,327,547 bushels reported by the census of 1890 for the preceding year. The average annual yield per acre for the 10 years ending with 1895 was 23.6 bushels, varying from 19.4 bushels in 1894 to 27 bushels in 1889 and 1891. Although corn is cultivated from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Red River of the North to the Everglades of Florida, fully two thirds of each year's crop is the production of some 7 or 8 states in the Mississippi valley, whose several proportions vary from year to year. More than three fourths of the corn-production of the country is consumed in the county where grown, and in many parts of the country there has been a noticeable tendency to restrict the area devoted to this product. The growing favor with which a more diversified system of agriculture is regarded appears, however, to be stimulating the cultivation of corn, especially in the states in which cotton was for so many years almost the only crop. Corn fails to find favor with the countries to which the United States exports its other surplus breadstuffs, and the annual shipments abroad average less than 50,000,000 bushels. In 1894-95 the total exports amounted to only 27,691,137 bushels, valued at $14,650,767, and those of corn-meal to only 223,567 barrels, valued at $648,844.-Wheat. For many years wheat-production in this country increased with amazing rapidity. There seemed to be no limit to the capacity of foreign nations to absorb our surplus, at a price which, while subject to fluctuations, was, on the whole, profitable to the producer, and the success that attended the cultivation of wheat in northern Minnesota and Dakota upon the opening of the Red River valley and other similarly favored regions was so marked as to give rise to one of the most remarkable movements of population that have ever occurred, and concurrently to an enormous increase in wheat-production. While the development of the Northwest since 1882 forms, with its attendant circumstances, one of the most interesting chapters in the annals of American agriculture, it can be referred to here only as one of the most