University of Kentucky - Kentuckian Yearbook (Lexington, KY)

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Knowing that the greatest source of wealth, to the state oi Kentucky lies in the development of her agricultural resources, one would expect to find in her state university the course in agricultural science surpassing all other courses in equip- ment and facilities for instruction. Such is not the ease however. For a long- time after the foundation of the College most attention, was devoted to the devel- opment of the scientific courses, and owing to the lack of equipment and teaching force the School of Agriculture made hut little progress. In the last few years, however, the tendency has changed, agricultural schools all over the country have begun to grow apace. Where students were formerly numbered by the tens and scores, they are now numbered by the hundreds and thousands, and the agricultural course has come to be the best offered by many of the great universities. And why should this not be so? W hat calilng is more noble than that qf the husbandman of the soil, who lives close to nature and “holds sweet communion with her visible forms;” who “Far from the mad’mng crowd’s ignoble strife, Pursues the even tenor of his way.” From the farm has come a large percentage of the world's great men who once knew what it was to pull- the bell-cord over “Old Beck” and welcome the music of the dinner horn. The Agricultural Course at State College is developing at a rapid rate.. It combines in itself the best elements of both the classical and scientific courses. The erection of the new Agricultural Building, which will be completed by the beginning’of the next school year; will mark a new epoch in the course. Equip- ped with all the facilities of the most approved modern college of agriculture, there is good reason for the expectation that it will in a short time rank with Illinois, Cornell, or Iowa. 27

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At present the department finds a home in the Natural Science Building, where the laboratories, herbarium, library, and offices are located. The splendidly equipped farm of the Experiment Station serves admirably to illustrate the prin- ciples taught in the class room. Dean C. W. Mathews, Professor of Horticulture and Botany; Prof. J. J. Hooper, of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Agriculture, and Prof. Gilbert, Assistant Professor of Botany, are well qualified for their positions. Prof. Scovell, Director of the Experiment Station, lectures on dairy subjects and commercial fertilizers. The Agricultural Course has many admirable features. In Botany and Plant Histology the student learns to distinguish accurately between the trunk and the leaf of the tree, and in Farm Mechanics to differentiate by its external appearance a stave silo from a gasoline engine. Nor is Animal Husbandry to be ignored, for tbrein it is learned that the horse is a quadruped and the horse-trader a rascal; that the dairy cow must have “the dairy temperament!’ and must be fed a balanced ration. A grand array of other good things might be enumerated if space permitted. After basking in the sunshine of Logic and senior History and having his thoughts elevated bv the study of Astronomy and being profoundly amused and entertained by the charming Metaphysics of which he is inordinately fond, the senior “Ag” is ready to take a job with Uncle Sam “at $1,500 per annum” or else go back to the farm to edify his neighbors by the latest and best methods of scien- tific agriculture—an honor to his state, an ornament to his community.