bureau furnishes the daily weather chart to many schools to be used for educational purposes, and sends out also a leaflet to explain the chart. For a number of years the Bureau of Plant Industry has been co-operating with the normal schools in the City of Washington in conducting schoolgarden experiments to determine the value of such work and discover the best methods of conducting it. The bureau is now furnishing two greenhouses, two acres of land divided into plats for two hundred and fifty children and the necessary seeds, manure, and teamwork for carrying on this work. The normal schools provide the teachers and pupils. As a result of these experiments nearly every school in the District of Columbia has undertaken garden-work or schoolground improvement. Congress has appropriated a small amount for teachers of gardening, making it possible to start four other school-garden centers, and the children of Washington bought in the spring of 1907 over 160,000 packets of seeds for home gardens. A report on this work and on similar work in other cities is published in Bulletin 160, of the office of experiment stations entitled School Gardens. The Bureau of Plant Industry has also prepared and published farmers' bulletins on School Gardens, Annual Flowering Plants, The Decoration of Home Grounds, and the Propagation of Plants, which are much used in public schools. During 1906-7, the bureau corresponded with over twelve thousand schools on school gardens and schoolground improvement and distributed about seventy-five thousand sets of seeds to be used in this work. The forest service is conducting an energetic propaganda to impress upon school officials and teachers the importance of giving some instruction in forestry in the public schools. This it is doing thru publications, thru addresses and lectures, thru the press, and thru correspondence. It has within six months sent publications to over one hundred thousand individual publicschool teachers. It has made addresses before teachers' institutes, normals, and other gatherings of teachers in eastern, southern, and middle-west states. It has prepared maps for publishers, suggested text-matter for schoolbooks, and begun to formulate exercises and methods for teachers of nature-study. It has furnished local examples in many regions of proper methods of planting forest trees and caring for wood lots, thru the plans which it has prepared and put into operation on the lands of private owners. It has identified many hundreds of forest specimens submitted by school-teachers, loaned collections of lantern slides, loaned, sold, and given away forest photographs, and met a large and growing demand for miscellaneous information thru correspondence. It sent out during the month of April of the present year over one hundred and seventy thousand copies of a circular for the use of teachers in connection with Arbor Day. Certain of its publications are used widely for supplementary reading, and to some extent as textbooks. It makes special effort to respond to requests for publications which are useful for school libraries. All of this work is aiding powerfully, tho for the most part indirectly, to bring education in forestry as a branch of agriculture into the public schools. Several features of the work of the Bureau of Chemistry find a way into the public schools, especially those relating to the adulteration of foods and other agricultural products and to methods of analysis. The schools in which. domestic science is taught make frequent use of the publications of this bureau. The officers of the Bureau of Soils are in close sympathy with the movement for the extension of agricultural education. They have furnished lecturers for teachers' institutes, soil maps and reports for use in public schools, and soil samples for use in agricultural colleges. They have made special soil maps of school farms, notably in Alabama and Georgia, and have aided, are now aiding, these schools in planning and carrying out soil-improvement experiments. The Bureau of Statistics under plans suggested by Hon. Willet M. Hays, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture is making a careful statistical study of the organization, cost, and effectiveness of consolidated rural schools, especially in relation to the introduction of work in agriculture and home economics into such schools. The division of publications is the agency of the Department of Agriculture in charge of the printing and distributing of its publications. The editor is quite partial to teachers and recognizes the fact that the dissemination of department publications thru the public schools is one of the very best uses that can be made of them, but he solemnly charged me not to boom the distribution of department publications. The printing fund is already inadequate to meet the large demand from educational institutions, teachers, and students, and any increase in such distribution would necessitate a large increase in the fund for printing. If the friends of education would prevail upon Congress to deal more liberally with the division of publications they might expect a cordial response in the way of a freer distribution of department publications. THE OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS Director A. C. True, of the office of experiment stations, is deeply interested in all phases of agricultural education, and he is quite generally recognized as a leader in this field. He has been twice called to the deanship. of the Graduate School of Agriculture and will act in the same capacity at the third session of that school at Cornell University next summer. For many years he has been chairman of a standing committee on Instruction in Agriculture, of the Association of Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations. In this capacity he has had much to do with the formulation of courses in agriculture for colleges and schools of different grades, and this work has had a wide influence in the creditable beginning that has been made to reduce the teaching of agriculture to pedagogical form. Under the leadership of Director True the work of the office of experiment stations in relation to agricultural education has become so broad and the demands upon the office on the part of the educators have become so varied that it has been found necessary to organize the work under two sections, one dealing with the agricultural colleges and schools and the other with farmers' institutes and other forms of extension work in agriculture. I shall speak only of the work in relation to colleges and schools which may be conveniently grouped under four heads. (1) The collection and publication of information regarding the progress of agricultural education at home and abroad: This includes the annual statistics and organization lists of agricultural colleges and experiment stations; lists of schools in which agriculture is taught, suggestive courses in agriculture for schools of different grades; laboratory exercises in agriculture for colleges, secondary schools, and elementary schools; popular articles describing features of instruction in agriculture in successful schools; lists of textbooks and works of reference in agriculture, and reviews of the literature of this subject in the official journal of the office; the Experiment Station Record. (2) Studies of different grades of American and foreign schools in which agriculture is taught: This involves visits to many of these schools, and a study of their literature with a view of giving wide publicity to the commendable features of their work. This branch of our work has made it necessary to examine over one thousand foreign publications during the past year. In this connection we maintain a card index containing over three thousand six hundred cards relating to institutions in which agriculture is taught, twelve hundred of these referring to American colleges and schools. (3) Work in co-operation with the Association of American Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations: This is primarily committee work and correspondence relating to courses in agriculture. It is lacking in spectacular features but has nevertheless an important bearing on the extension of agricultural education in public schools. A bulletin from the committee on Exercises in Elementary Agriculture came from the press May 24, and the entire edition of seven thousand copies is now exhausted. It will be reprinted and later will be supplemented with circulars containing special exercises on the chemistry of agriculture, root crops, cotton, fruits, etc. A report on a Secondary Course in Agronomy is nearly ready for the printer. The field for work of this kind is almost unlimited. I am sorry that the funds of the office do not allow us to cultivate it more fully. (4) The giving of aid to agricultural colleges and schools and to state and local school authorities along lines of agricultural education: This is our miscellaneous work-ever changing, ever new and interesting, each feature of it presenting a new problem to be solved by some method yet to be formulated. At one time it means a Christmas trip to California, a Thanksgiving trip to Virginia, or a midsummer trip to Lake Champlain to give an address or an illustrated lecture before a state convention of teachers; again it may mean a drive of one hundred and fifty miles over the dusty roads of Kansas to arouse enthusiasm for an agricultural school, or an April campaign in Maine snow-banks to stir up the normal schools on forestry, or a week's conference with school men in Georgia to formulate courses for a whole system of state agricultural schools. A score or more of such trips have been taken during the past year. It may consist of less spectacular but no less effective work in the office— correspondence, conferences, the sending out of lantern slides and other illustrative material, the preparation of special data for school officers or members of Congress. Last summer upon invitation we sent a young man, a teacher who had displayed special aptitude in teaching elementary agriculture, to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Maryland for five weeks to give instruction in-agriculture at teachers' institutes. We could have kept him constantly employed in this and similar useful work, but our funds would not allow it. We were compelled to furlough him for eight months to superintend the starting of a rural agricultural high school in Maryland. He is now with us again and will put in his whole time up to September 1, in teachers' institutes in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Then we shall have to let him go back to his school, where he will do excellent work, tho in a field much narrower than we could offer him if Congress were disposed to be more liberal with us in appropriating for the educational features of our work. "Aye, there's the rub!" We find little difficulty in getting adequate appropriations to fight the cotton boll weevil or the browntail moth, or to engineer some irrigating project-anything with commercial interests back of it, but when we ask for $10,000 or $15,000 to aid in improving the minds of our children to make the coming generations of farmers less dependent upon Congress for aid-there is none so valiant as to raise lance in our behalf. Such in brief is the educational work of the national government so far as it has a bearing upon agriculture. Speaking more particularly for the Department of Agriculture, we find that there is a large demand for such assistance as we are able to give. We would like to increase our facilities and broaden our work, not to the extent of undertaking work which the states can just as well do for themselves education is primarily a function of the statebut to the extent of co-operating more effectively with the different agencies concerned in the education of our youth-the state agricultural colleges, the normal schools, state and county superintendents of education, and teachers. The big problem of the immediate future, it seems to me, is to prepare teachers of agriculture. Until that problem is solved we shall have to be content with "hitting the high places"-introducing agriculture where favorable conditions prevail. WHAT HAS BEEN DONE BY NORMAL SCHOOLS AND AGRI- E. E. BALCOMB, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE, The reports from the various state normal schools and agricultural colleges of what they have done and are doing for popular education in agriculture has proven very interesting reading to me. It shows that the educational ideal is now changing, that there is a sentiment to make agriculture the center of correlation. The manifested eager desire of men in both systems of education to be of real value to the people of our great commonwealth shows that our educators are not mere theoretical pedagogs, but real, live, practical, publicspirited men, working and planning to create true and active citizens. And it makes one rejoice that one is permitted to be even a small factor in this. To secure definite, reliable, and live information upon this subject I mailed to the president of each agricultural college, each state normal school, and to certain other schools in the United States the following questions with a request to answer them in full for this report: (1) What has your school done, and (2) what is your school doing, for popular education in agriculture? (3) What work are you planning for the next two years? (4) What would you wish to have your school undertake if conditions were made favorable ? The questions were made thus general so that each school would certainly mention its own characteristic work. The last two questions while not called for in the subject assigned was the best means of bringing forth the attitude of educators upon the need and desirability of popular agricultural education. Information was received from ninety-one state normal schools, with all the states but Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Georgia represented. Over thirty reports from private normal schools and secondary schools offering agriculture were received, and I regret that lack of space prevents including a summary of their most successful work. The presidents of all state agricultural colleges except those of Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, and Vermont responded, making forty-two replies in all. This is an extremely good showing and altho not complete is certainly representative and indicates the attitude toward this subject in the United States. As the one responsible for securing this information for the Association I heartily thank these more than busy men for their generous response. It means much to answer in full such questions and it is a further proof of the interest of these men in practical education. I regret that I cannot quote many of these letters in full. It would be an inspiration to you. Of the ninety-one state normal schools from which information was received, seventy-five believe in instruction in agriculture, and are either giving it in some form or desire to do so. Of the sixteen not so expressing themselves, nine give good reasons, four give no reasons at all, and only three express themselves as questioning the course or as being opposed to it. The fourteen not giving courses but desiring to do so make statements like this one from President Jones of Ypsilanti, Mich.: It is my fervent hope to place a professor of agriculture in charge of a department here who shall give his entire attention to the building-up of standards and ideas of agriculture in the minds of the children in the rural schools and to prepare teachers so that they may enforce such instruction. Sixty-one state normal schools are now offering courses, or have made |