t yet appreciate their
opportunity. But the change for the better has been so marked that all
agricultural educators are extremely optimistic.

One of the most difficult and most important phases of agricultural
education is that of a secondary grade. The great proportion of educated
farmers will probably be trained for their business in secondary
schools. This problem is being approached from many standpoints. The
University of Minnesota established, some fourteen years ago, a school
of agriculture, which now enrols several hundred pupils of both sexes.
Wisconsin is trying the experiment of two county schools of agriculture.
Occasionally the public high school will be found offering a course in
agriculture. Several states are experimenting in one or more of these
lines, and during the next few years we shall see a large development of
this phase of agricultural education.

One of the most interesting movements in agricultural education has been
an attempt to introduce nature-study and even the elements of
agriculture into the country schools. Cornell University has taken the
lead in advocating "nature-study" purely, for the schools; and the
University of Missouri has perhaps been the leader in advocating that
the work be made even more definite and practical, and that the country
pupils shall be taught, during their early years even, "the elements of
agriculture." Both plans are being worked out with a fair degree of
success, and many other states are carrying out the work in some form or
other. Of course the idea is not a new one, but its present practical
application is a timely one, and it will not be long before this branch
of agricultural education will become a prominent factor in rural
betterment.

A most suggestive phase of agricultural education is college extension
work. University extension has had a rather meteoric career in this
country, in so far as it has been connected with educational
institutions; although the extension idea is spreading rapidly and is
being worked out through home study and correspondence courses of all
sorts. But I think there is scarcely any field in which the real college
extension idea is today being more successfully applied than in
agriculture. The work started with farmers' institutes, which were
instituted about twenty-five years ago and which have been adopted in
practically all the states of the Union. It has broadened within ten
years, until now it is carried on not onl