In the development of higher education in modern China,a group of agricultural teachers composed of overseas returnees in agriculture were active . At the beginning of 20th century,many young people from the coastal Jiangsu,Zhejiang and Guangdong,cherishing the ideals of″saving China through education″,″saving China through agriculture″,went to the institutes of higher agricultural learning in Japan and France to study sericulture,agronomy and horticulture .Since 1909,with the tide shifting to America,more young people went to the institutes of higher learning,e .g . Cornell University to study the disciplines relevant to agriculture and many got degrees . Since the mid and later 1910s,they returned to China successively and joined the teaching and research in institutes of higher agricultural learning . They introduced the modern collegeconcepts and disciplines of higher agriculturein the West and reformed them according to the actual Chinese conditions .In a sense,they made contributions to the formation anddevelopment of higher agricultural disciplinesin modernChina byestablishinga triple mode of″teaching,research and promotion″,exploring teaching theories,compiling new textbooks,cultivating better teachingfaculty,conducting scientific research,organizing academic groups and initiating academic journals.