their daily calendar, it is probable that the Sunites would also have trouble in setting their seasons. Especialy would this be true if either or all of the eight planets did not keep a regular and successive order in their orbital course. It is not wider from the mark to hold that the planets are suns to the Sun, that day and night would be in a constant state of confusion, and that the seasons would be in an exasperating mixup, than is the theory that the "light" and "heat" of earth come from the Sun through a stretch of nearly a hundred millions of miles of utter cold and impenetrable darkness. Light and heat would be lost. in such cold and darkness for "solar luminous rays are always accompanied with calorific rays." As the space filling thing called ether is imponderable, dustless and in consequence frictionless, it is believed that the assumed countless millions of light giving lines of electricity that shoot out from the Sun with an irresistible force and a maddening fury are non-luminous before encountering resistance in our atmosphere. Similarly, dustless air is non-luminous, as well as meteors before entering into the atmosphere of the earth.

If we do not see the Sun what do we see? We see a luminous ball not more than 200 miles away. How is this possible? By the non-luminous lines of magnetic energy produced by the revolutions of the Sun bombarding the finely comminuted matter present in the atmosphere, warming it, and in some unknown way throwing its particles of dust into incandescence. Have we any data for such an hypothesis? Yes, as follows: The light of day is most brilliant at the equator where the strata of dust are deepest. Again, as one traveled from the equator to one of the poles, or ascended into high altitudes he would find that the light diminished in brilliancy, become hazy, and would lack in the color of the spectrum. There would also be a corresponding lowering of the temperature. The change in brilliancy, in the colors of the spectrum, and fall in the temperature, would undoubtedly depend on the gradient fall in the density of the

dust of the air. From this showing it can be argued that sunlight is possible only where there are dust particles, atoms or electrons endowed with the property of luminosity when charged with solar energy. To prove this theory, it would be necessary to ascend into the outer edge of our atmosphere and there discover that the sun was behind the observer and not ahead. In close relation to this assumption, is the probable fact that the cold of the polar regions is not due to the slant of the rays of the sun, but that the atmosphere is thinner in these regions, in consequence of which the etheric cold comes and bears heavily on the surface of the earth.

According to this theory, it would be as impossible to determine the distance to the Sun which is the central orb of the solar system, as it would be to determine where a given dynamo was located by simply looking at its incandescent lamp. Just as the dynamo produces the elemental material (?) called electricity that raises the carbon fiber in the lamp to a white heat, so does the "influence" which shoots out from the Sun cause the atmospheric dust to become luminous which in turn, becomes our atmospheric or-to us -the real sun.

Since electricity does not develop light while traversing etheric space, and since. there is nothing to support the theory that the Sun is a seething ball of fire 92,500,000 miles away, or any other known distance for that matter, it is evident the theory that "We See the Central Orb of the Solar System" needs to be recast so as to be more in harmony with the teachings of optics and the "science" of elec

tricity.

This writer was not aware when preparing a paper on "Sunspots, Summer's Heat and Cyclones," which he read before the Chicago Society of Anthropology, Sept. 28, 1902, that any one had laid the foundation for the theory herein set forth, until recently meeting with the following by Prof. Loomis, in Am. Jr. Sc., and Arts, Sept., 1870 and 1873, quoted in Ency. Brit. 9th Ed. V. IX. Art.-Astronomy, p. 787. In speaking of the cause of the Aurora (borealis) he said

that "The appearance favors the idea that this emanation (influence from the sun) consists of a direct flow of electricity from the sun;" . . . "while this influence is traveling through the void celestial spaces it develops no light; but as soon

as it encounters the earth's atmosphere, which appears to extend to the height of about 500 miles, it develops light . .

This is a clear illustration of the old saw that there is nothing new under the "illusional" sun.

In the year 1850 the new State of Michigan adopted a constitution. In the convention which preceded this adoption much discussion was had upon the question of agricultural education. Certain members of the State Agricultural Society, wiser than their generation, had noted the clumsy methods of the average farmer in the new country, had observed his ignorance of the elementary principles of the sciences of chemistry and botany and had dreamed of a possibility of correcting bad methods by teaching farmers better science. The constitution adopted by the assembly of which these men were members contained a clause that the Legislature of the State should originate an agricultural college. The ideal agricultural college of that day was an institution with a great big model farm as the principal factor, with a li brary, with museums, classrooms and other equipment necessary for giving instruction in practical work in the field and stable with such sciences as might be absolutely necessary to intelligent planning and faithful execution. It was not until May, 1857, that the college was actually inaugurated. This date ought to be sacred to every American farmer, since it marks the birth of the oldest agricultural college on the continent and the beginning of agricultural education. in the United States.

In 1862, Hon. Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, a member of the United States Senate, presented to that body for a second or third time, a bill appropriating money to the several States and Territories for agricultural education. The bill passed in April. It was not until 1869 or 1870 that the colleges were really placed upon their feet ready to open their doors to students. The movement was,

in the country at large, a new one, and for ten or even fifteen years thereafter the number of students who availed. themselves of the opportunity to study agriculture and the sciences upon which it rested was exceedingly small. After 1890 the members began to increase rapidly until at the present date we have in the United States, as a whole, fully three thousand men studying agriculture in these young institutions.

Naturally at the beginning of this work in America many mistakes were made. Some colleges went to the extreme of laying the whole stress on practical work, so-called, on work with the hoe, the scythe, the plough and the hand, attempting to mix in a little book work, so-called, and a very small modicum of laboratory work with the hours spent in the field. Others, copying after the older colleges in England and on the Continent of Europe, neglected the factor of field work altogether and devoted the entire time to languages, chemistry, botany, geology and zoology. These mistakes were corrected as time made them conspicuous until at the present time agricultural education is reduced to something like a pedagogic form. The aim has somewhat changed. In the beginning it was the thought of some colleges to graduate men who would be fitted for practical farm work and for little else. It was the aim of others to make scientists competent to handle the test tube and the microscope, but without training in the practical management of farms as business ventures of the application of the sciences which they had studied with such assiduity, to the solution of the problems which daily confront the man who must make his living from the farm. At present the colleges in all States have

seen the mistakes in the past and are correcting them. The ideal of the college now is to graduate educated men; not men with minds stored with undigested information; not reservoirs of facts, but dynamos, generators of force; business men acquainted with the forms and principles adopted by men universally in their relations with each other.

In the college course proper the man is valued as the chief factor and is developed into habits of correct thinking and correct living, while the occupation of farming which he is to follow influences his course by placing in the curriculum the studies needed to fit the developed man for his life work.

Let it be remembered that the college has no monopoly of education. In the In the first place the student is pretty well along in his education when he comes to college. Education is a matter of character building. Character is the personal unit, the soul, acted upon by habit. Habits are formed in babyhood and youth under the supervision of parents with the aid. of playmates and companions. college is called in when the habits are fairly well fixed by experiences in the home, to afford, and to afford economically, the experiences of a wider world. without loss of time or money. A col

The

lege is another instance of modern economy, where, from men of will and costly experience, the student gains all the advantages of mature years with none of the drawbacks. It is a mistake to lay all the failures of graduates in later life. to defects in the college. They are more often the direct and inevitable consequences of heredity and home training in youth. The college can and does fur

nish training and experience, but the homes must furnish suitable men to receive them, if education is to do its great work in the uplift of modern agriculture.

These colleges do not content themselves with the limited function of giving training of a college grade to young men who can leave the farm for four years. They are reaching out for broader usefulness.

Through the experiment stations they are broadening our knowledge of soil plants and animals; through special courses they are reaching men, possibly more advanced in years, held to the farm by ties they cannot break, but who can, nevertheless, visit the college for a twelve period period of possibly eight or weeks in the winter; through the Farmers' Institutes, they are reaching the home and families; through reading courses and extension work of various sorts they reach men and women in town and country and interest them in the study of rural problems; through nature study of agriculture in the public schools they are turning the attention of the pupils to the methods of nature in growing the food and clothing of mankind. Nor are the colleges content to leave the matter here. They believe themselves divinely appointed as leaders in the work of rural betterment whose duty it is to coordinate all forces now engaged in the enterprise, such as the rural press, the country school, possibly the country church, the institutes, farmers' organizations and college extensions, into one consistent, cogent influence cogent influence helpfully touching the farm at all possible points, and certain to lift Eastern agriculture into a better position than it now enjoys.