The herald., 1896-11-01
SCIENTIFIC FARMING
How Work Goes on at "Cow Col.
lege"
A Stimulus Toward Good Sense in Agri-
culture-How People Ask Questions.
Wine-making Olive Culture.

BERKELEY, Oct 15.-(Special corre-
| Spondence of the Times.) To UNDER
stand the work that is going on here,
| one has to remember that the Univer-
! sity of California is a real university;
| that is, a number of individual colleges.
all intimately bound together and under
the same general direction, but each
with it's own faculty and its own partic-
| ular aims
One of the very oldest of all the de-
| partments is the college of agriculture,
| and it's work, quietly and unostenta-
tiously accomplished, is scarcely appre-
| ciated, so little is it known by most peo-
| pie.
Cow college," as the students irrev-
| erently call it, has for the center of its
| activities wooden building near the
southern edge Of the university grounds,
on the banks of Strawberry creek. Here
are the offices of the directors and the
| various professors, the reading room,
the class rooms, etc.
| But this wooden building is only a
part Of the equipment Of the agricul-
| tural department. Its work is carried
on from one end Of the state to the other
| by means Of the experiment stations,
outposts, where Investigations are car
ried on as to problems of soil, fertiliz-
ers. plant life, olive culture, forestry,
wine-making, etc.
department as being an outgrowth Of
| the other side of the university-the cul-
| ture colleges. But it Is just the other
| way around. The first state institution
was a college of agriculture and me-
chanics, and the other departments
budded out from that. This Califor-
| MIA agricultural college was the first
one in the United States, and it stands
| today at the head Of all others in Amer
| lea.
Now, I want to tell you something
about Prof. b. w. Hilgard, the man who
I has made the agricultural department.
and is ITS life and soul. He is small
slight and wiry. His hair is gray, and
| his keen eyes look at one through spec
tacles. He is German by birth, and
| though most of his life has been passed
| in America, he still talks with German
accent. In his own line, agricultural
| chemistry, he has no superior. Once
every ten years gold medal, commem-
orative Of Liebig, the great German
| chemist, is awarded to the man held to
be the greatest chemist living, the man
| who is doing the most valuable scientific
work in that line. Prof. Hilgard is the
possessor of one of these medals.
Some Of his most famous work has
been in the line of soil analysis, the
study of the reclamation of alkali lands
in especial Not long ago man came all
.
study the question Of alkali lands under
Prof. Hilgard's direction. Any farmer
who finds that his crops will not grow
we'll and wants to know what the soil
needs to make it fertile can send sam
Piles of it to the University of California
agricultural department. 1t will be ana
lyzed and he will be told just what to do
| to correct deficiencies in its chemical
composition.
One fruit raiser whose ranch is in Cen
trail California wrote to Prof. Hilgard
that his trees all seemed to be stunted
and wretched. Prof. Hilgard happened
to know that section of country thor
oughly. He wrote back to dig down six
| feet and see what he could find. The
| farmer dug down two feet and struck
rock. The man from whom he had
bought the place had blasted out holes
in which to plant his trees. That was a
case where advice as to fertilizers
couldn't save the trees. Some farmers
are absurdedly unreasonable. They will
| write for information as to what kind
of fertilizer to use, sending no samples
of soil and no description thereof and
then grow angry and call the agricul-
tural scientists ninnes because they
can't tell offhand, like medium.
The number of regularly enrolled
students in "Cow college is not large.
But there are a great many people TAX
ing particular lines of work there, men
who enroll in the colleges of chemistry
or of natural sciences, but spend most
of their time in agricultural studies.
There are courses in agricultural chem
istry, in olive culture, in general agricul-
ture, in sugar beets and sugar manufac-
ture, in viticulture. in wine-making, in
economic entomology and other allied
topics, and anybody who wants some
special line of work will be gladly ad-
vised and helped.
But. after all, the sole object is not
to instruct students. Perhaps the most
important phase of the work is the origi-
nal investigation that goes on.
university, the professors have summer
vacations. In the agricultural college
they never have more than two weeks