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INTRODUCTION.

"AN ACT donating Public Lands to the several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arte," approved July 2, 1862, prescribes as one of the conditions of the grant, that—

"An annual report shall be made regarding the progress of each college, recording any improvements and experiments made, with their costs and results, and such other matters, including State, industrial and economical statistics, as may be sup posed useful; one copy of which shall be transmitted free, by each, to all the other colleges which may be endowed under the provisions of this act, and also one copy to the Secretary of the Interior."

For the purpose of carrying out this requirement of the act of Congress, it was provided, under section 5 of "An act to provide for the organization and maintenance of the Illinois Industrial University," that

"The Trustees may appoint, also, the Corresponding Secretary, whose duty it shall be, under the direction or with the approval of the Trustees, to issue circulars, directions for procuring needful materials for conducting experiments, and eliciting instructive information from persons in various counties, selected for that purpose, and skilled in any branch of Agricultural, Mechanical and Industrial Art; and to do all other acts needful to enable him to prepare an annual report regarding the progress of the University in each department thereof-recording any improvements and experiments made, with their costs and results, and such other raatters, including State, industrial and economical statistics, as may be supposed useful; not less than five thousand copies of which shall be published annually, and one copy be transmitted by said Corresponding Secretary, by mail, free, to each of the other colleges endowed under the provisions of an act of Congress, approved July 2, 1862, entitled "An act donating lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts;" one copy to the United States Secretary of the Interior; and one thousand copies to the Sccre. tary of State of this State, for the State Library, and for distributiou among the members of the General Assembly. Also, a Recording Secretary, whose duty it shall be to keep faithful record of the transactions of the Board of Trustees, and prepare the same for publication in such annual report."

These quotations from the National and State laws upon the subject, show with sufficient clearness the general duties and roquirements of the Board of Trustees, and of the Corresponding and Recording Secretaries in reporting their acts. The very comprehensive wording of the statute concerning the duties of the Corresponding Secretary, however, make it desirable to get more precisely at the meaning of the framers of the State statute.

This law was originally drawn up by a committee consisting of Wm. H. Van Epps, Prof. J. B. Turner, A. B. McConnell, B. G. Roots and John P. Reynolds, appointed at the State Fair held at Decatur in 1864, and was presented to the Legislature as the expression of the views of the farmers of Illinois in 1865 and 1867. Although changed in other and important particulars, the general plan of organization and working was left untouched; and I therefore quote from Professor Turner, who doubtless had an important part in drafting the bill, his statement of the intended function of the University in its relation to practical agriculture and arts, and the duties of the Corresponding Secretary as a means of intercourse between academic science and practical art.

In an address delivered at the County Fair at Monmouth, October 4, 1866, Prof. Turner said:

"The charter implies that gratuitous experiments in agriculture and the arts should be annually made under direction of the Board, by the County Superintendents, of each crop or special interest, in all the counties in the State; and annual reports made to the Institution, and by it to all other Institutions of the kind in the Union, and to the central department at the Capital, according to the terms of the grant, and much in the same way as the monthly reports are now made from every county to the same department.

"For example: In each of the one hundred counties of Illinois, for one year, some simple, practical, definite experiment would be tried by an intelligent superintendent for that county, on the corn crop, on a small piece of ground: by another superintendent on the wheat crop: by others on diseases of cattle, and hogs, and flocks; by others on the green crops, the garden and orchard; by others on all sorts of mechanical tools, implements and machines; and on the new composition, strength and quality of materials, etc., etc. In short, whatever the Trustees and Faculty should wish to see put to a general, practical, thorough test, on all the varied soils, and affecting all the varied interests of eaeh county in the State, would be ordered for practical trial on a small and cheap, but sufficient scale, in all the counties of the State, to forever settle that point, as a matter of absolute knowledge or science, and not as mere guess work. Thus the science of agriculture and the sciences of the mechanic arts, will advance, almost without cost, more rapidly toward a state of absolute perfection, than any other sciences ever did, or could, under ordinary conditions.

"Thus, too, the whole State, and eventually the whole Union, will become one vast agricultural, experimental farm; and while producing one crop for our present wealth and support, evolving, as it should do, year by year, scientific knowledge, at once diffused through the annual reports over all classes of society, increasing the intelligence of the workmen, and the fertility and capacity of the soil, year by year and enhancing the products and wealth of the State, in a geometrical ratio, to the latest generations to come. This would be intelligently using the soil, and using the continent as it ought to be used, for the good of mankind-in body and in spiritin intelligence and in art-in wealth and in power, and not simply living on the soil, much as the pigs do, and rooting a bare living out of it, without social co-operation, or plan, or forecast.

"Thus we should evolve a real agricultural science-evolve wealth, and capacity, and power for all other needful sciences and arts whatever. I know of no sane man who doubts that such an organization of our Industrial Universities, all over the land, would increase our wealth by millions, and increase our intellectual and social activity and power in a still greater proportion. The sun never shone on such a nation, and such a power, as this would soon be, with such facilities of public advancement and improvement, put into full and vigorous operation. Set all the millions of eyes in this great Republic to watching, and intelligently observing and thinking, and there is no secret of nature or art we cannot find out; no disease of man or beast we cannot understand; no evil we cannot remedy; no obstacle we cannot surmount; nothing that lies in the power of man to do or to understand, that cannot be understood and done."

It will be seen from this that large results were expected by the framers of the bill, from the official labors of the Corresponding Secretary; and it is to be hoped that, as the income of the Institution increases, and more means can be spared for the purpose, that this expectation may not be disappointed; as the office can be made, in the hands of the authorities of the University, a most efficient channel of communicating the results of scientific research to practical men, and receiving in turn the isolated facts of experience, whose combination and comparison furnish the best basis of agricultural and mechanical science.

Under the difficulties springing from recent organization, limited means and immature plans, but little could be done or reasonably expected from the efforts of the Corresponding Secretary for the first year after the organization of the University under its charter; and the little that has here been attempted and accomlished may be regarded rather as an indication of the kind of facts wanted, than as any important collection of them.

The large part of the report necessarily occupied by the record of the preliminary labors of the Board of Trustees, has excluded a good deal of matter of a statistical and scientific character, col. lected for insertion in this report, but now laid over for the next.

In this report, however, will be found a tolerably good presentation of the current practices of our Illinois farmers, and a documentary history compiled from the early writers of our State, on the industrial condition and progress of our people up to a period removed by not much more than one generation from the present time. These two pictures may be regarded as the panorama of the past, giving a general view of the Illinois farmer from the days of the old French settlements to the present time, and in some sort are a summing up of what has been done thus far by our farmers in getting hold of correct theories of agricultural science, and in putting them into practice.

Turning from this presentation of the past to the future, it may not be amiss to indicate what should be done, in part, by this department of the Industrial University in the future.

I. Under the head of Economical Science, a vast work remains to be done in which this department may render efficient service in collecting and collating facts and specimens.

1. The Soils and Subsoils of our State, in all their variety, should be collected and subjected to critical analyses and tests to determine their chemical and mechanical constitution, their peculiar merits or defects, the crops they can most profitably grow, and the manures they can receive with the greatest advantage. Collections similar to those already made by the Illinois Central Railway, and by Mr. Eugelmann, late of our State Geological Survey, but much larger, and embracing samples from every county in the State, should, as soon as possible, be made and placed in the cabinet of the University. Our building and lime rocks, coals, clays, etc., should be also collected and tested; but it is presumed that for a considerable part of this work we may depend upon the labors of our Geological Survey.

2. The Meteorology of our State should have a careful study, with the hope of attaining to ultimate practical results. The meteorological data, of which we already have a considerable collection, should be carefully collected and compared, and arrangements made for additional and continued observations in all parts of the State. It is now believed that some of the most destructive vegetable diseases-such as rust in wheat, rot in the potato, mildew and rot of the grape, and blight in the pear tree, are, in part at least, the result of climatological extremes. These conditions should be determined if possible. Numerous stations and

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