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Michigan State Agricultural College BY PRESIDENT ABBOT
Dr. Tappan afterwards gave an address at the State fair (Sept., 1853)', in which he speaks of his plan still further. See Michigan Agricultural Report, 1853, pages 188, 198 to 200.
In 1854 the chair of agriculture in the university was filed by the Rev. Charles Fox, an Englishman, educated at Rugby, rector of the episcopal church at Grosse Isle. Agriculture was the favorite study of Mr. Fox, and he had some time previously to his appointment given to the university library $lOO to enlarge the store of agricultural literature. Mr. Fox died after occupying the university chair less than two years. Our library contains a work of Mr. Fox's on agriculture.
1853
A bill for an agricultural college passed the Senate of 1853 by a vote of 17 to 14, but was lost in the House by a vote of 36 to 24... The society then sent its executive committee to visit the university and the normal school to see what was doing in the way of instruction in scientific agriculture in those institutions. They visited Ann Arbor January 25, 1854. Professor Fox was delivering at the time a course of lectures on practical and scientific agriculture. The committee listened to a lecture by Professor Fox on "Rotation of Crops, " and were highly pleased. The committee also listened, at the normal school, to a lecture by Prof. L. R. Fiske, on "Organic and Inorganic Materials of the soil, and its Improvement, by Manuring, Draining, and Pulverization. ".
The State Agricultural Society, however, had become fixed in their preference for a separate institution, and in December, 1852, appointed a committee to urge on the legislature the establishment of a separate school, not in immediate proximity to an existing educational institution, on a farm of not less than 640 acres.
Michigan State
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