meat, but the men who projected the enterprise were content to trust the future to vindicate the correctness of their judgment as to the principle involved.
Under this act the following gentlemen were elected, forming the first board of trustees: M. W. Robinson, Timothy Day, J. D. Wright, G. W. F. Sherwin, William Duane Wilson, Richard Gaines, Suel Foster, J. W. Henderson, Clermont Coffin, E. H. Williams, and E. G. Day.
The first meeting of the board of trustees took place at Des Moines, January 10, 1859, according to law, and organized by the election of the following officers: Jesse Bowen, president pro tem.; Richard Gaines, treasurer; William Duane Wilson, secretary. Mr. Wilson held the office of secretary during the entire period of the existence of the " Agricultural Bureau." E. H. Williams having resigned, John Pattee, auditor of State, was elected to fill the vacancy.
Proposals for the sale of lands for the college farm were issued at this meeting, and circulated over the State, to be acted on at the meeting of the board June next.
A " correspondence committee " of three was appointed to find and recommend to the board suitable persons for the president and professors of the college.
In June propositions were received from the counties of Hardin, Polk, Marshall, Tama, Jefferson and Story. Committees were appointed to visit the various sites offered, and a spirited, but good-natured, contest for location ensued. The record shows that at one time Hardin County received seven votes and Polk County four votes, but was next Day reconsidered, and finally the location was awarded to Story County.
In determining the location of the college farm, the value of the county bonds voted to aid the enterprise was taken into consideration, and private donations of land and subscriptions of money were important items.
On the 20th of June, 1859, the board located the farm in the western part of Story County; buying a tract of 647k acres of unimproved land in one body for $5,380.
The donations to the college were: $10,000 in Story County bonds; individual subscriptions, $5,400, with ten per cent interest from date of location, payable in two years; and 980 acres of land located in Story and Boone Counties, mostly near the farm. The estimated cash value, at the time of the several donations, was $21,500.
The following paragraph occurs in the report of the joint committee appointed to visit the college and farm in 1864, and examine into the condition of affairs connected with the institution: " Your committee, after a thorough examination, are of the opinion that it would have been difficult for the trustees to have made a selection more fully complying with the requirements of the law than the one Purchased. It has upon it at least six different varieties of soil, representing the prevailing kinds in the State; it has more than fifty varieties of timber, bushes and shrubs, and running water, spring and well water in abundance; plenty of gravel, stone, sand and material for brick ; high dry land, level dry land, rolling clay, second bottom, sloughs, fiat wet bottom and timber bottom, besides the genuine prairie land. We know of no other farm of the size in the State combining so many leading characteristics of Iowa soil, and we are satisfied that the main object had in view by the framers of the organic law was, that the experimental farm should combine as many leading characteristics of the lands of our State as possible to be found on one farm, that all the different varieties might be thoroughly tested with the vari-