VETERINARY UNIVERSITIES (THIERÄRZTLICHE HOCHSCHULEN).

1. Royal Veterinary University at Berlin. Founded in 1790, but raised to university grade in 1887. Duration of study, 7 semesters. Requisite for admission, Reifezeugniss of a gymnasium or of a Realgymnasium. Professors, 12; assistants, 3; students, 453; appropriation, $56,312, of which the state furnished $25,000. The school has an anatomical, a pathological, a physiological, and a histological institute. There is a clinic for internal diseases, etc., another for external disorders, for small animals, a pharmacological institute, an "ambulatory clinic," and a chemical institute.

During the year 1890 2,315 horses, 2 horned cattle, 1 hog, 1,127 dogs, 16 cats, 1 deer, 1 goat, 1 sheep, 1 squirrel, and 38 birds were in the hospital.

In the polyclinic were treated 5,900 horses, 1 horned beast, 5 goats, 22 hogs, 7,465 dogs, 265 birds, 96 cats, 5 rabbits, 7 squirrels, 2 porpoises, 2 hedgehogs, 5

apes.

In their stalls were treated about 600 animals and several herds. Over 100 cadavers of animals were used in dissection.

2. The Royal Veterinary University in Hanover. Founded 1778; raised to present grade in 1887. Duration of study and requisites for admission as above. Professors, 6; teacher, 1; assistant teachers, 6; students, 221; appropriation, 823,660, of which the state supplied nearly $12,000; 4,800 animals of various kinds were treated during the year; 266 visits were made by students with a teacher and 485 without.

Number of schools.

SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING.

Requisites for admission Reifezeugniss of a gymnasium or realgymnasium.
Duration of course, 3 years and a haif.

Teaching corps:

Professors

Students

Assistant teachers..

Appropriation.

2

18

10

674

$79,972

DIVISION B-AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES.

As a rule the agricultural schools (Landwirthschaft-Schulen) are not state institutions, although regulated by it, but are institutions subventioned by the state, a city, or a society. They have the object of preparing their students for farmers by teaching them as far as possible the science and art of agriculture, and by giving them a general education. The completion of the Tertia of a gymnasium absolves the student from two years of the compulsory military service, and the completion of the course of these agricultural schools is accepted as equivalent to the completion of the Tertia of the gymnasium course. In Germany the standard of reference for mental training is ever the gymnasium course.

In Prussia there are 16 of these colleges. They were established as furnishing a grade of instruction higher than the Ackerbau schools (see Division C), and were regulated by a Royal decree of 1875, which furnished them with a code, and, of course, a programme. As might be expected, they have all been established between 1875 and 1880. Some were formerly Ackerbauschulen, but the majority are new institutions.

The cities, provinces, or districts, and the agricultural societies have been about equally interested in starting though not in supporting these schools, but the Government exercises an oversight through the minister of agriculture, domains, and forests. In order to obtain absolution from two of the three years of army service the schools must strictly follow the curriculum provided, must have the necessary apparatus for teaching, and at least four professors, including the director, who must have passed through the course of an agricultural school of university grade. The subjects of the course provided by the Government are as follows:

1. Religion.

2. Language.

(a) German. Correct use of the mother tongue and acquaintance with the classics of the language.

(b) Latin (optional). Ability to read a selection from an easy prose writer, a piece of easy poetry, with assistance in the case of unusual words, but otherwise with ease and purity.

(c) English or French. Correct pronunciation and knowledge of the more important rules of grammar. Facility in reading medium difficult prose (Voltaire's Charles XII or Irving s Sketch Book) and ability to translate an easy theme in the mother tongue into English or French without any serious errors of orthography, grammar, or idiom.

3. Geography: Principal points of mathematical geography [astronomy]. Knowledge of the different parts of the world, seas, mountains, rivers, etc. For Europe, and especially Germany, special knowledge of the natural and political features and ways of communication. History: Acquaintance with the principal facts relating to the Greeks and Romans. More special knowledge of the growth of the German Empire and the development of the states of which it is composed, especially Prussia, the intellectual advancement being regarded as well as the political.

4. Commercial arithmetic and the application of the same to agricultural affairs. Computation of surfaces and solids. The four fundamental algebraic operations, powers, roots, and logarithms, equations of the first degree of one and two unknown quantities, planimetry, knowledge of the simple trigonometrical functions and their application to goniometry, surveying with simple instruments, leveling, and mapping.

5. Natural science.

(a) Zoology: Knowledge of the different classes of animals with the principles of anatomy and physiology, with especial reference to animals important to agriculture.

(b) Botany: Knowledge of the vegetable families and the elements of vegetable anatomy, physiology, and pathology.

(c) Mineralogy and soils (Bodenkunde). Knowledge of the important minerals, their qualities, and usefulness of the different kinds of soils, the formation and agricultural value.

(d) Physics. Experimental familiarity with the great laws of physics (qualities of bodies, heat, etc.), and with meteorology.

(e) Chemistry. Knowledge of the most important elements and their compounds, as well as of the processes in their manipulation, with especial reference to physiology and technical agricultural affairs.

6. Agriculture.

(a) Production of vegetation. Knowledge of principles that govern the tilling and the amelioration of the soil and the growing of crops; acquaintance with the culture of the important plants.

(b) Breeding of animals. Knowledge of the principles of rearing, feeding, and care of domestic animals.

(c) Management. Knowledge of the factors of good management and their connection with the management of a farm; bookkeeping.

7. Drawing.

8. Gymnastics and singing.

Time table of the Prussian agricultural colleges.

Subject.

1. Religion, obligatory for unconfirmed students..

2. Language, German and two foreign languages, Latin, English, or French..

3. Geography and history.

The statistical facts connected with the school of Division B are these:

A garden is always attached to these schools, and frequently more extensive grounds, such as experimental fields, fruit gardens, and the like. There is almost always a preparatory school, which should be taken into account in considering the number of teachers, but the 1,090 students given above are professional students and are not in the preparatory course.

DIVISION C.-ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS.

The elementary agricultural schools, or Ackerbauschulen, are lower agricultural schools in which the pupil of the country school may continue his studies while learning something of the theory and practice of agriculture. There are 28 of these schools in Prassia, and although 7 of them were opened 1840 to 1860, the great majority have come into existence during the last twenty years, during which there seems to have been a desire on the part of the Government to promote agricultural education.

There is no common programme for these schools, and it is thus very difficult to discuss their curriculum. Perhaps they may with sufficient accuracy be divided into three classes: Those having one or more teachers of the grammarschool studies, and a teacher of agriculture, these having a teacher of the grammarschool studies and teachers of agriculture, surveying, and the elements of veterinary art, and those (the largest class) having several teachers of a course which resembles the scientific course of an American high school and also instructors in agriculture and related arts. How far this instruction is carried it is impossible to say. As the completion of the course do s not absolve the student from two-thirds of his army servic, the state has no indirect way of stimulating a high or even a uniform curriculum, which thus being left to the locality is, it may be presumed, in some places high, in others low. The schools are excellently well supplied with experimental fields, etc. Smithing and other trades are taught. The course is, as a rule, 1 or 2 years in length; occasionally it is only 1 year, and in two instances it is 3 years. The summary of the statistics of this class is as follows:

The object of these schools is to continue the general education of the common country school. They offer to the farmer's boy, at the time when his services are not required on the farm, or to the young farmer who is not in the situation to avail himself of the instruction of the Ackerbauschulen, a certain amount of practical instruction which such persons require to carry on advantageously their vocation. Of these schools there are 73. They are in the main supported

a Does not include preparatory school pupils, nor 66 Ackerbauschulen pupils, nor 17 winter school pupils, nor 23 pupils in a very mixed school which is joined with one of these agricul tural colleges.

by the provinces, which appropriate from $250 to $1,000 annually; but the sources of support are various, the state, the district, the city, and very frequently a society, make grants. In 69 of them there were, in 1890, 2,235 pupils.

DIVISION E.-MEADOW SCHOOLS.

These have the object to instruct the sons of peasants in the management of meadows and in draining. There are 3 schools with an attendance of 195 pupils. They seem to be specialized winter schools, and are supported by the province in which they are located.

DIVISION F.-POMOLOGICAL AND GARDENING INSTITUTES.

Of these there are 4. The course is of two or three years.

The conditions of admission are, on the intellectual side, the completion of the upper or lower class of the gymnasium grade, called Tertia, and, on the practical side, 2 years' experience in gardening. Pupils in attendance, 137 ;' appropriation for 3 schools, $36,037, mostly from the state.

The full course of the Royal Institution for Teaching the Cultivation of Fruit and Wine-making at Gersenheim is as follows:

(a) Fundamental subjects: Botany, chemistry, physics, zoology, mineralogy, and mathematics.

(b) Professional subjects: Cultivation of plants in general, fruit-culture, tree trimming and growing, pot culture, pomology, utilizing fruit, grape-culture and the enemies of the vine and fruit tree, vegetable-growing, landscape gardening, flower-growing, drawing plants, painting fruits, and surveying and levelling.

(e) Horticultural bookkeeping, bee-keeping, singing, and gymnastics.

It will suffice to show the condition of agricultural education in Prussia to give the titles and attendance at the other classes of schools. For convenience the classes previously spoken of are again given.

General statement of the attendance at the schools for agricultural and the related arts at the close of the year 1890.

Occasionally it has happened in the history of the public-school systems of Europe that public economic distress or social disorder has been the cause of an addition to the curriculum of the public schools, and in order that the new subject may be properly and thoroughly presented in the elementary schools the

1 Does not include 215 persons in short courses in one school.

curriculum of the schools for training teachers has first been similarly enlarged. No sooner does the German Emperor complain, for instance, that he finds that the curriculum of the German public schools in the past has given him no aid in combatting the socialistic theories so prevalent in his Kingdom of Prussia, and straightway the subject of political ec nomy is introduced into the Prussian schools for training teachers; and so has it been with the subject of agriculture in France. Though the French revolution decided that agriculture should be placed upon the programmes, it was not until 1851, however, that instruction in agriculture was in roduced as a part of the programme of the last year of the course of the schools for training teachers.

In 1860 the majority of 6,000 teachers to whom the French minister of public instruction had applied for suggestions as to the ameliorations to be made in elementary instruction responded that agriculture should be added to the course of the public schools. Shortly afterwards the symptoms of an agricultural crisis began to appear, and an investigation was made into the matter for the purpose of remedying the evil. The commission were unanimous in calling attention to the powerful influence that elementary instruction would exert in favor of agriculture, the greatest national industry of France, if introduced as a subject of study in the public schools. The manner in which this instruction should be introduced was given under three heads: First, the instruction that should be given in the schools for training elementary-school teachers; second, the instruction that should be given to the children in the district schools; third, the instruction that should be given to the adults in special courses which were appropriate to the needs of agriculture. By the law of 1879 it was enacted that every department that had not yet established a departmental professor of agriculture should be obliged to provide for one within three years. At the close of 1888 instruction in agriculture was completely organized in almost all the schools for training elementary-school teachers. But in the elementary schools instruction in agriculture has been unsatisfactory. "It is to the teacher that a good book on agriculture is indispensable; in the hands of the child it is more hurtful than helpful," says the report of the professor of agriculture of the Department of the Gironde.

But above the district school, and frequently in connection with it, there are higher elementary schools, which are of two kinds-professional and nonprofessional. In the city of Paris the course of these schools is as follows

Theoretical branches.

The subjects of this programme are apportioned over the three years' course, so as to apply in the best way to the requirements of professional instruction.

WRITING.-Principles and practice of running-hand, round-hand, and commercial handwriting.

HISTORY.-Principal characters of antiquity, history of France up to the present day, development of national institutions, chief epochs of general history (ancient, middle ages, and modern).

GEOGRAPHY.-Physical and political geog raphy of the world, special geography of France (comprising the divisions for administrative purposes), economic geography, map drawing.

MODERN LANGUAGES.-One modern language at least.

MATHEMATICS.-First year: Theoretical and practical arithmetic, first elements of ordinary geometry. Second year: Advanced arithmetic, elements of algebra, plane geometry and its applications. Third year: Principles

of algebra as applied to the solution of simple equations, the elementary principles of rectilinear trigonometry as applied to the estimation of triangles, elementary principles of solid geometry and their application, the common

curves.

ACCOUNTS.-First principles of commerce and account keeping, book-keeping, current accounts bearing interest.

PHYSICS.-The most important phenomena and the principal theories of physics, modern discoveries, and the application of science to daily life.

CHEMISTRY.-Exercises involving the observation and examination of some of the familiar facts introductory to the study of chemistry, the metalloids and the most useful metals, the laws of chemistry, the elements of organic chemistry.

NATURAL HISTORY.-Organs and functions of men and animals, practical study of the principal groups of animals and vegetables, application of hygiene to the local industries, principal facts of geology, and examination of the best-known minerals.

SINGING. Choir, with three parts.

GYMNASTICS. Exercises with apparatus and military drill.