Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/247

Rh course 123 graduates; from the engineering, 4; military, 42; and from the practical department, 114,

In 1874 an agricultural department was added to the Imperial University at Tokio, the original location of the Sapporo College. An exhaustive syllabus in the Department of Agriculture provides examination for many profound students of this science, and admits them to the highest university degree. Four courses are open in the university—viz., agriculture, agricultural chemistry, forestry, and veterinary medicine. In 1895 there were 261 students of agriculture in the university.

From this extended though by no means exhaustive review of the status of scientific instruction in agriculture throughout the world, it is evident that all the progressive nations have caught the inspiration which attaches to this branch of education, and are swinging into line in their efforts to adopt it. Old ideals are rapidly giving place to the new. Educators are forced to admit that mental culture is as possible under the study of science as by the protracted study of languages and literature; that such study aids vastly more than the latter in the training which prepares men for the active duties of life; and that if the development of husbandry as a pursuit does not keep pace on an intelligent basis with every other technical pursuit, national greatness and permanence will never be achieved.



URING the past two years the United States Fish Commission, with characteristic enterprise, has been carrying on experiments in the propagation of Eastern oysters in the bays of the Oregon coast. Work of a similar nature is now being undertaken in the State of Washington.

As the result of an application through official sources, re-enforced possibly by the results of a biological survey made by this department during the preceding summer, twenty-two barrels of Eastern oysters were, on November 7, 1896, deposited on a portion of Oysterville Flat, so called, in Yaquina Bay, Oregon, seven miles and a half from the ocean. The oystermen of that section have agreed to abstain from tonging for native oysters upon the portion of the flat thus reserved until sufficient time has elapsed to justify an opinion as to the result of the experiment. These introduced oysters were of two varieties—the long, slender East 