The whale being a small one, as before noted, the whole business was over within three days, and the decks scrubbed and rescrubbed until they had quite regained their normal whiteness. The oil was poured by means of a funnel and long canvas hose into the casks stowed in the ground tier at the bottom of the ship, and the gear, all carefully cleaned and neatly "stopped up," stowed snugly away below again. FOOTNOTE: [13] From The Cruise of the Cachalot. By Frank T. Bullen. (Illustrated.) New York: D. Appleton and Company. Pp. 379. SKETCH OF MANLY MILES. To Dr. Manly Miles belongs the distinction of having been the first professor of practical agriculture in the United States, as he was appointed to that then newly instituted position in the Michigan Agricultural College in 1865. Professor Miles was born in Homer, Cortland County, New York, July 20, 1826, the son of Manly Miles, a soldier of the Revolution; while his mother, Mary Cushman, was a lineal descendant of Miles Standish and Thomas Cushman, whose father, Joshua Cushman, joining the Mayflower colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621, left him there with Governor Bradford when he returned to England. When Manly, the son, was eleven years old, the family removed to Flint, Michigan, where he employed his time in farm work and the acquisition of knowledge, and later in teaching. He had a common-school education, and improved all the time he could spare from his regular occupations in reading and study. It is recorded of him in those days that he was always successful in whatever he undertook. In illustration of the skill and thoroughness with which he performed his tasks, his sister relates an incident of his sowing plaster for the first time, when his father expressed pleasure at his having distributed the lime so evenly and so well. It appears that he did not spare himself in doing the work, for so completely was he covered that he is said to have looked like a plaster cast, "with only his bright eyes shining through." A thrashing machine was brought on to the farm, and Manly and his brother went round thrashing for the neighbors. Industrious in study as well as in work, the boy never neglected his more prosaic duties to gratify his thirst for knowledge. He studied geometry while following the plow, drawing the problems on a shingle, which he tacked to the plow-beam. Whenever he was missed and inquiry was made about him, the answer invariably was, "Somewhere with a book." He was most interested in the natural sciences, particularly in chemistry in its applications to agriculture, and in comparative physiology and anatomy, and was a diligent student and collector of mollusks.