University of Virginia Library

VI. Courses of Scientific Instruction, Continued

By the session of 1881–2, the scientific department of
the University, besides the schools already mentioned,
comprised the Schools of Natural Philosophy, Mathematics,
Natural History and Geology, Agriculture, Zoology
and Botany, and Practical Astronomy. Within a
few years, there was in existence a separate chair restricted
to biology and agriculture.

During the session of 1876–77, a museum of natural

history was erected, through the special benefaction of
Lewis Brooks, of Rochester. A large number of specimens
were then added, in illustration of the sciences of
zoology and botany, and also of geology and mineralogy.
The objects which the donor had in view in his noble
gift were to increase the popular interest in these sciences,
—the study of which, he said, had afforded him a keen
solace in his old age; to assist an institution which had
been founded by Jefferson, and nurtured by Madison,—
great figures in history, whose memories he deeply revered;
and, finally, to bestow a lasting benefit upon the
South by augmenting the number of opportunities open
to its young men to acquire a practical education. The
sum of seventy thousand dollars was expended upon the
building itself, and eleven thousand, five hundred more
in adding the cases, and also in paying off certain small
charges. A part of this second fund was obtained by
a loan from the Society of Alumni, and by the sale of
University bonds to the Miller Board of Trustees.

The architectural plan adopted for this useful structure,
though handsome of its kind, was not in harmony
with the style of the adjacent edifices. The executive
committee, thinking it the wisest policy to avail themselves
of the expert knowledge of Professor Ward, who
represented the Brooks estate, asked him to choose a
Rochester architect to draft the plans; but to Ward himself,
it seems, the final decision as to their character was
expressly reserved. The single question of convenience,
regardless of congruity, appears to have given the ultimate
shape to his selection; and the model submitted, excellent
in itself, but out of accord with the general grouping
of the University, was accepted by the committee,
who followed this up with a request for the necessary
specifications and working drawings. The cabinets

were collected, arranged, and prepared by Professor
Ward at Rochester; and he also superintended their removal
to the University, and personally took part in
mounting and labelling the different specimens. The
assortment of fossils and plaster casts was one of extraordinary
merit. The assortment of minerals, which contained
samples of every important variety, and many of
great rarity, was hardly less valuable; and so was the
collection in illustration of botany. From the start, it
was intended to gather together in the museum such a
grouping of specimens in all these sciences as would be
copiously representative of the resources of the State in
these several departments.

Through the liberality of W. W. Corcoran, the philanthropic
banker of Washington, a professorship of
natural history and geology was established in 1878,[4]
with an endowment fund of fifty thousand dollars attached
to it. What ought to be the characteristics of
the man who should be elected to it? It required a
very distinguished committee of the Faculty to answer
this interrogatory. And this was their conclusion: he
should be a geologist of thorough training; he should be
an original investigator in his province; he should be
a competent teacher; he should be the respected associate
of distinguished scientists; and, finally, he should be a
gentleman, whose individuality and example would increase
the social light, and broaden the moral influence,
of the University. How many men were there, who
could, without appearing overbold and presumptuous,
come forward as candidates and tacitly hold themselves
out as possessing all this rare combination of claims to
consideration? The number necessarily was small. It
was all the more to the honor of Professor William M.

Fontaine that he was chosen, after the application to his
personality and attainments of such a varied series of
tests. The courses in his school comprised geology,
mineralogy, and botany. The board, in 1880, authorized
the annual expenditure of a respectable sum by him
and his pupils in excursions each spring to places that
could be quickly reached, where they would be able to
make a study, on the ground, of the different aspects of
the several sciences taught in the school under his charge.
Another object of these excursions was to procure specimens
that should illustrate the varied character of these
sciences,—especially ores and minerals,—for preservation
in the museum. Any student of the University,
whether a member of Professor Fontaine's class or not,
was, after the payment of a fee, permitted to take part
in these interesting explorations. In 1880, botany was
transferred to the School of Agriculture, but was returned
during the session of 1887–8.

Additional dignity was imparted to the School of
Natural History and Geology by including it among the
elective studies for the degree of master of arts. By
the session of 1893–4, there had been adopted two
courses of instruction for it,—one embraced that section
of geology which was designated as an elective for the
degree of bachelor of arts; the other, that more advanced
section designated as an elective for the degree of master
of arts. The first allowed of such an acquisition of
knowledge as an educated man or woman would aspire
to; the other, when thoroughly mastered, fitted the student
for a professional career in that science.

In 1886, the Faculty urged upon the Board of Visitors
the great advantage of securing for the University, Virginia's
proportion of the land fund assigned to the several
States by an act of the Federal Congress in 1862.

It seems that the General Assembly had, during the session
of 1865–66, been content simply to provide for the
reception of this share, which was primarily intended
to be used in giving lessons in the military and agricultural
arts. The recent death of Thomas Johnson, of
Augusta county, who had bequeathed to the University
a reversionary right to property valued at twenty thousand
dollars for agricultural instruction, had quickened the
Faculty's interest in the national landscrip. The final
question of how to distribute the large sum thus acquired
by the State came up in the Legislature for decision
during the session of 1866–7. Should that body offer
the money to a literary school already in existence? or
should a new technical school be founded in harmony with
the true spirit of the grant? The people of Virginia,
at this time, were not thought to need a technical school.
Should the money be kept in the treasury until the advantages
of such a school should come to be fully perceived?
After assigning one-third of the fund to the
use of Hampton Institute in 1870–1, the General Assembly
determined to employ the remainder in erecting
an agricultural and mechanical college. Such was the
genesis of the institution at Blacksburg. The University
authorities of that day have been since criticized for their
failure to obtain the appropriation of this fund. On the
face of the records at least there seems to have been no
tenable ground for this censure.

In June, 1868, the Board of Visitors had accepted a
plan drafted by Professor Mallet for the creation of an
experimental farm. Not long after Samuel Miller's
donation of one hundred thousand dollars, for the teaching
of the science of agriculture at the University, was
announced, there was a joint effort on the part of the
Board and Faculty to persuade the trustees of that fund

to devote at least a portion of its income to the support
of the two new chairs of analytical and agricultural
chemistry and applied mathematics, on the ground that
these chairs had been established principally for the advancement
of the science of agriculture and the arts congenial
to it. A committee appointed by the Board to
confer with the trustees went so far as to say that the
Visitors would be willing to add a new professorship of
natural history, and any other course that might be desired,
to the two schools just mentioned, and to name this
combination the Agricultural Department of the University
of Virginia. They promised besides that the projected
experimental farm should be laid off at once, and
at the earliest time practicable brought to the highest
condition of productiveness.

The trustees refused to accede to these suggestions,
because to do so, they asserted, would be inconsistent
with Mr. Miller's intentions; but they agreed that the
Visitors should undertake the organization of a School
of Agriculture, the only school to which, they declared,
they were impowered to pay the income of the fund.
They estimated that, during the ensuing session, this
income would amount to at least three thousand dollars;
but they reserved to themselves the right to withdraw
it in any one year of the future, should they think that,
during the previous session, it had not been used for
purposes fairly and legitimately within the scope of the
provisions of Mr. Miller's gift. In the meanwhile, they,
in accord with the power conferred on them by the terms
of their trust, nominated Mallet as the professor of applied
chemistry in the projected School of Agriculture,
and Leopold J. Boeck as the instructor in those courses
in applied mathematics which related to the same school.

The Board of Visitors promptly confirmed this action.

A site for the experimental farm was soon chosen. This,
by the following June (1870), had been surrounded with
a fence; and a few agricultural tests on a diminutive
scale had been undertaken. It was not until the July
of this year (1870) that the trustees of the Miller fund
were in a position to announce that its income was now
sufficient to allow the practical creation of the School of
Agriculture, Zoology, and Botany; but no professor had
been appointed by the Board of Visitors as late as May,
1872, although the trustees had protested against the
delay. During the interval, they had been appropriating
a large sum for the development of the farm; for the
rents of the houses occupied by Mallet and Boeck; for
the salaries of these two professors in part; and for the
support of at least one scholarship. It was suspected,
whether justly or not, that neither the Faculty nor the
Board of Visitors would ever be brought into sympathy
with the purpose of Mr. Miller's gift, unless that gift
should be used primarily to increase the efficiency of the
chairs of analytical and agricultural chemistry and applied
mathematics. It was not until September, 1872, that
John Randolph Page was appointed the professor of the
new school, and the scheme contemplated by Mr. Miller
set in practical motion.

The first report of the Visitors' committee that had
the affairs of this important school in charge was pessimistic
in its tone. They announced that the experimental
farm held out only a narrow prospect of usefulness.
The ground on which it had been laid off was
stated by them to be barren and liable to overflow,—
an indication of carelessness, if not indifference, in the
original selection. Unless the soil was drained and fertilized,
they predicted, this site would have to be abandoned.

The Miller trustees were very properly keenly interested
in the success of this farm. They requested that
a field at least forty acres in extent should be assigned to
the school elsewhere; and that this area should be of the
proper quality, and should lie conveniently. They reserved
the right to suspend the payment of the money
hitherto appropriated to the Miller scholarships until
they should be able to improve the condition of the farm
up to the point at which it would realize fully the purposes
of its creation. In order that the trust might be
more faithfully performed, they requested that the professor
of applied mathematics should deliver weekly, during
four months, a series of lectures in exposition of the
basic principles and best methods of constructing agricultural
buildings, implements, and machinery. This was
in 1874. At this time, the agricultural department consisted
of the following studies: to Professor Page was
assigned the course in natural history, and in experimental
and practical agriculture; to Professor Mallet,
the course in general and applied chemistry; to Adjunct
Professor Dunnington, the course in analytical and agricultural
chemistry; and to Professor Boeck,[5] the course
in applied mathematics and engineering.

The entire province of agricultural science seemed to
be embraced in the scope of these combined chairs, and
yet the trustees of the Miller Fund announced that they
were not satisfied with the fruits of the teaching. The
department, they said, was not efficient. They asked
the Faculty to explain the failure. That body, in their
reply, described somewhat copiously the handicaps which
were blocking the progress of the school. If the two
greatest colleges in the United States, Harvard and Yale,
found it impossible, with all their inexhaustible pecuniary

resources to make their agricultural departments
prosperous, how could such a consummation be reasonably
expected of an institution with the relatively small income
of the University of Virginia? The urgent need
of the young men of the South was a practical education.
Was this to be got by the study of botany and the kindred
subjects of the School of Natural History, Experimental
and Practical Agriculture? That these young men
thought not was silently demonstrated by the small attendance
in that school. As to the science of agriculture
proper, which undoubtedly could be used to gain a livelihood,
there were now scattered about the South a number
of excellent colleges which offered the opportunity
of obtaining a general education at the very time that
they offered also the chance of learning how to become a
skilful farmer. In all these colleges, the expenses were
cut down to the most economical footing, and the student
was able, by manual labor under their roofs, to earn
money enough for the payment of his different expenses.
Perhaps, the most successful of them all was the one
which had been founded at Blacksburg. This institution
drew to its lecture-rooms and shops most of the
young Virginians who wished to acquire a practical knowledge
of mechanical trades or agricultural pursuits. The
advantages which it proffered had only a shadowy
counterpart in those held out by the agricultural school
of the University of Virginia.

The trustees of the Miller fund could hardly have
received much comfort from this forcible reply of the
Faculty, of which we have given only a scant synopsis.
Four years afterwards, the experimental farm seems to
have become the principal target of the wit and humor
of the editors of the magazine, who were always on the
watch for professorial shortcomings. Many a barbed

jeer, in the form of a short paragraph, was flung at it in
the pages of Collegiana; and so ribald grew these really
brilliant jests that a stern warning came from the Star
Chamber of the Faculty that they must not be repeated;
and this order was reluctantly obeyed, to the sensible decline
in the gaiety of that periodical. The ridicule so
freely showered on the farm by the editors was probably
a reflection, in exaggerated shape, of the popular impression
of its lack of usefulness. The trustees of the
Miller Fund,—the persons most directly concerned about
the success or failure of the experimental tests,—
seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion, although
in a more sober spirit. At their meeting in June, 1880,
they declared that the School of Agriculture had reached
far short of the intentions of Mr. Miller and of the
expectations of its supporters, and they gave notice there
and then that, unless the attendance should increase, and
more practical results be accomplished during the next
twelve months, the department would have to be reorganized.
But how little change in its condition occurred
before June, 1881, was revealed in Professor
Page's melancholy confession that his class in agriculture
had shrunk to one lonely auditor; and that in the class
of botany, a branch of the course in natural history,
the attendance had fallen to three.[6]

Notwithstanding this indisputable vacuum in the lecture-room,
the Board of Visitors, assembling in the following
August, refused to acknowledge that the trustees
of the Miller Fund were correct in asserting that the
school of experimental and practical agriculture had

proved to be "a lamentable failure." They also denied
with emphasis that that body possessed the right to discontinue
their usual annual appropriation as threatened,
and demanded that, before such a step should be taken,
the question of its legality should be brought up in the
Court of Appeals for a decision. The Visitors appear to
have been very much offended by the trustees' supposed interference
with the government of one of the professorships.
"Under no circumstances," they declared, "will
we admit that there is a divided authority as to the guidance
or control of any school in the University." A soberer
mood suggested the wisdom of settling the dispute
privately and amicably; and with that wise purpose in
mind, the Board appointed a committee to confer with the
trustees. The latter, it would seem, had only been doing
their duty in making the complaint so warmly, if not
intemperately, excepted to. The resentful attitude of
the Visitors was pushed too far. That the complaint had
just ground was acknowledged by themselves at their
meeting, held in November, 1883, when their own committee,
instructed to make a thorough investigation, reported
that Mr. Miller's plans had remained "dormant,"
on account of the "unproductive management" of the
School of Agriculture. They recommended that it
should be reorganized from top to bottom. The steps
taken by both parties with this object in view reflected a
spirit of mutual conciliation. A joint committee was
appointed, in which the Visitors and trustees were equally
represented. From this time, no cause for friction of
importance seems to have arisen.

By the session of 1883–4, the Agricultural Department
was made up of the Schools of Agriculture, Botany,
and Zoology, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Analytical
and Agricultural Chemistry, Natural History and Geology,

and Mathematics applied to engineering. The
Board of Visitors were indefatigable in fostering the usefulness
of the department as thus readjusted. In 1886, a
committee of that body recommended that the instruction
which was given in it should be drawn out over two years;
that the course in engineering should be enlarged; and
that, in the other important branches, a junior and a
senior class should be enrolled. The experimental farm
now received a valuable addition in the erection of a
grapery and pomological station. During the ensuing
session, the different studies embraced in the agricultural
department were distributed between an introductory
course and an advanced course. The first comprised
zoology and botany, mineralogy and geology, physics and
general chemistry; the second, scientific and practical agriculture,
industrial chemistry, analytical and agricultural
chemistry, and agricultural engineering. The School of
Agriculture itself was confined to three courses: (1)
zoology and botany, (2) scientific and practical agriculture;
and (3) agricultural engineering.

In June, 1887, the joint committee recommended that,
at the end of twelve months, there should be elected a
professor of agriculture who was known to be an authority
on scientific biology; and that, after a conference with
the new instructor, the school should be again reorganized.
At this time, the University of Virginia was not
provided with the equipment necessary for experimental
research in biology; and without it no really valuable
progress could be made in that particular field of study.
Money for this purpose could only be obtained by allowing
the income from the Miller Fund to accumulate; and
for this reason, the proposed alteration in the scope of
the school was not at once undertaken. The Visitors
seem to have regarded the experimental farm now with

an emotion of undisguised disappointment. Indeed, they
considered its utility to be so open to question that they
were skeptical of the wisdom of spending upon it the
sum annually appropriated for its maintenance. Instruction
in the different branches of scientific agriculture
was already given in the Schools of Natural Philosophy,
General Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Geology and
Mineralogy. These four schools were supposed to furnish
a complete basis for the study of the kingdom of
inanimate nature. Besides the four named, there was
the School of Industrial Chemistry, which offered a course
of technical instruction in the arts touching the raw materials
furnished by the farmer; and also the School
of Engineering, which held out the like course in agricultural
engineering and machinery. There was lacking,
however, a course of instruction in the two sciences
which represented the kingdom of animate nature;
namely, botany and zoology.

As soon as the original school was reorganized, Professor
A. H. Tuttle was elected by the trustees of the
Miller Fund to fill the chair, and he was promptly accepted
as the incumbent by the Board of Visitors. There
were two classes of students whom his teachings were
intended to benefit: (1) those who wished to acquire
such information about biological principles as would
enable them to grasp with intelligence the relations of
biology to agriculture; (2) those who were aiming to
equip themselves for independent research in the same
science, or to serve as instructors in that branch of education
after leaving the institution.

The professorship was named the School of Biology
and Agriculture. Neither subject had previously been
adequately taught at the University of Virginia. The
attendance in the agricultural course, as we have seen,

had shrunk to one lonely student, and its only practical
illustration was to be found in a contracted farm and a
pile of miscellaneous implements. The course in biology
was, if possible, still more unproductive. Professor Tuttle
was thoroughly fitted, by acquired knowledge and native
talent alike, to give distinction to his school; and he
threw into every branch of his work an enthusiasm that
proved immediately contagious. He had first been instructor
in natural science in the college from which he
graduated; had subsequently pursued an advanced course
in the same department at Harvard; and after lecturing
upon the subject of zoology in one of the Pennsylvanian
seats of learning, had, during fourteen years, occupied
the chair of biology in the State University of Ohio. Besides
delivering a series of lectures on embryology, histology,
bacteriology, comparative anatomy, zoology,
botany and general biology, he passed much of his time in
independent research; and also wrote numerous articles
and text-books relating to the various subjects of his
school. He was unremitting, from day to day, in his
endeavor to stimulate his pupils' interest in the experimental
work of the laboratory.

The first step towards the establishment of a school of
practical astronomy,—a topic which had hitherto been
taught by the professor of natural philosophy, as a section
of his already plethoric course,—was taken during
September, 1866, when the Visitors instructed the rector
to solicit the assistance of Commodore Maury, the
famous scientist, in collecting a fund for the erection of
an observatory; and he was also, at the same time, to be
invited to assume charge of the School of Practical Astronomy,
Physics, Geography, and Climatology, which
the Board proposed to create specially for his incumbency.
There was no man in the United States who would have

performed the duties of this professorship with more
brilliant efficiency than he; and, perhaps, not another
could have given it equal celebrity in Europe. Unfortunately,
it was not then possible to obtain the necessary
sum, and Maury continued, to the close of his life, in
the service of the Virginia Military Institute.

It was not until 1878 that the scheme of an observatory,
with its accompanying professorship, began to take
on the shape of an actuality. In the course of that year,
Leander J. McCormick, a native of Virginia, who had
accumulated a great fortune in the West by the manufacture
of reaping-machines, offered to present the University
with one of the largest telescopes in the world.
This was accepted by the Visitors; and subsequently, Mr.
McCormick followed it up with the gift of eighteen thousand
dollars, to be used in the erection of an observatory
building. The only condition attached to this gift was
the collection of a fund sufficient to endow the chair.
William H. Vanderbilt very generously contributed
twenty-five thousand dollars of the amount required, and
the alumni and friends of the institution the remaining
fifty thousand. An additional sum was afterwards secured
to defray the expense of erecting a dwelling-house
for the director. The telescope was thirty-two feet
in length, and belonged to the class of refractors. The
object glass was twenty-six and one-quarter inches in
clear diameter, and of proportionate magnitude in focal
length. The revolving hemispherical dome of the observatory
rested on a frame of steel girders, with an
envelope of galvanized iron. Although the director,
Professor Ormond Stone, was, on the nomination of Mr.
McCormick, elected to that office in June, 1882, the
building had not been finished, in every detail, previous
to 1884. The dilatoriness of construction seems to

have become the target for numerous gibes on the part
of the students.

The course of instruction laid down in 1882–3 for
the School of Theoretical and Practical Astronomy embraced,
besides the fundamental principles of the subject,
the theory of meridian and equatorial instruments,
the methods of determining time, latitude, and longitude,
right ascensions and declinations, the formation of star
catalogues, the computation of orbits, and every other
higher aspect of the science. By the session of 1886–7,
a special course had been arranged for the benefit of
those who intended to become practical astronomers.
The director was also required to carry on investigations
that would add to the sum of the general knowledge of
the stars, and of the laws that governed those heavenly
bodies.