the vicinity of the University for an experimental farm, and to make such improvements thereon as would render it available for experimental and instructional purposes, in connection with the agricultural schools. To enable the Board to purchase and improve these lands, Dane County, under authority of the act, issued bonds for forty thousand dollars. With this amount nearly 195 acres of land west of the old university grounds and adjoining them were purchased at a cost of $27,054. The amount of productive Agricultural College Fund, September 30, 1886, was $258,597.74. The Fund yielded in the two years, 1886 and 1887, $32,990.91. The number of acres unsold, 1887, was 4,974. Both the University and the Agricultural College Funds have very nearly, if not quite, reached their maximum limits.

Before the reorganization in 1866 the State had never appropriated one dollar toward the support of its University, notwithstanding its serious financial embarrassments. The income was reduced from $18,397.70 in 1861, to $13,005.56 in 1862, and to $11,540.90 in 1863. The amount of University Fund income on hand September 30, 1866, was $5,501.47. This, with $144.93 belonging to the income of the Agricult ural College Fund, constituted the whole amount at the disposal of the Regents for defraying incidental expenses and paying the salaries of six or seven professors, and two assistants in the normal department, during the year 1866-67. But immediately after the reorganization, the Legislature adopted a more liberal policy. By a law of 1862, $104,339.42 had been taken from the University Fund. This sum was virtu ally restored by an act of 1867, which appropriated annually for ten years to the income of the University Fund $7,303.76, being the interest on the amount taken from the Fund by the law of 1862. Hitherto the burden of caring for its funds had been thrown upon the University; but now the State treasurer was made er officio treasurer of the University. The same liberal policy was still further pursued by the Legis lature of 1870, which appropriated fifty thousand dollars for the erection of Ladies' Hall. A gymnasium was built in that year; but this is illconstructed and poorly equipped, and must soon be replaced by a structure better adapted to the purpose.

By an act of the Legislature approved March 22, 1872, it was provided that there should be levied and collected for the year 1872, and annually thereafter, a State tax of ten thousand dollars, to be used as a part of the University income. The preamble cites in justification of this ap propriation the reckless way in which the State had disposed of its grant from the General Government, thereby diminishing by one-half the fund which a faithful administration of the trust would have produced. Thus, when it was too late, confession of the wrong done the University was frankly made.

The increasing good-will of the people of the State toward the University was further shown in 1875 by an appropriation of eighty thousand

dollars for the erection of Science Hall. This building was completed in 1877.

In 1876 the annual tax of ten thousand dollars was replaced by one yielding a larger amount. The new tax was based on the assessed valuation of the taxable property of the State, being one-tenth of a mill on the dollar. This tax was declared "to be deemed a full compensation for all deficiencies in the income arising from the disposition of the lands donated to the State by Congress in trust for the University." This tax was increased to one-eighth of a mill on the dollar in 1883, and the increase is devoted to the maintenance of a chair of pharmacy and materia medica, and to an agricultural experiment station. The State tax in 1886 yielded $61,017.45. It now forms the chief resource of the University.

In 1879 an assembly hall and a library were completed at a cost of thirty thousand dollars. December 1, 1884, Science Hall was burned with all its contents. At its session that winter the Legislature appropriated out of the general fund of the State the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a new Science Hall, machine shop, and boiler house; twenty thousand dollars for chemical laboratory; twenty thousand dollars for heating apparatus; a total of one hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Science Hall, first occupied in February, 1888, was the last of these buildings to be completed.

In 1885 a permanent appropriation, not to exceed five thousand dollars in any one year, was made for farmers' institutes. These will be treated of in another connection.

From private munificence the University has received Washburn Observatory, named in honor of the donor, the late Governor C. C. Washburn, at whose expense it was erected and equipped in 1878.

In 1878 Hon. John A. Johnson, of Madison, endowed ten scholarships of thirty-five dollars annual value each, and in 1888, Hon. John Johnston, of Milwaukee, established a scholarship of two hundred and fifty dollars per annum, in addition to a fellowship, mentioned elsewhere. Board of Regents.-The method of election of the regents by the Legislature was abandoned in the reorganization, and the power of appointment was vested in the Governor. The president of the University was no longer to be a member of the Board. In both these respects events have shown that the new organization was faulty. The States generally have given the presidents of their Universities a voice in the deliberations and decisions of the boards of control. By this means the skill and experience of the president, and his intimate acquaintance with the condition and needs of the school of which he has immediate charge and for whose welfare he feels himself most responsible, are made available and effective. The almost universal agreement on the point among institutions of the kind indicates that experience has shown the desirability of this feature. Without it there is lack of mutual confidence and helpfulness, a constant tendency to irritation and conflict.