The great defect in the plan I have presented is this: That _Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions

provided for the thorough education needed by those persons who are to

be appointed agents, and no provision is made for testing the qualities

of soils, and the elements of grains, grasses, and fruits. My answer to

this suggestion is, that it is in part, at least, well founded; but that

the scientific schools furnish a course of study in the natural sciences

which must be satisfactory to the best educated farmer or professor of

agricultural learning, and that analyses may be made in the laboratories

of existing institutions.

It is my fortune to be able to read a letter from Professor Horsford,

which furnishes a satisfactory view of the ability of the Scientific

School at Cambridge.

"_Cambridge, Sept. 19, 1857._

"MY DEAR SIR: The occupation incident to the opening of the term has

prevented an earlier answer to your letter of inquiry in regard to the

Scientific School.

"The Scientific School furnishes, I believe, the necessary scientific

knowledge for students of agriculture (such as you mention), 'who have

been well educated at our high schools, academies, or colleges, and have

also been trained practically in the business of farming.' It provides:

"1st. Practical instruction in the modes of experimental investigation.

This is, I know, an unrecognized department, but it is, perhaps, the

better suited name to the course of instruction of our chemical

department. It qualifies the student for the most direct methods of

solving the practical problems which are constantly arising in practical

agriculture. It includes the analysis of soils, the manufacture and

testing of manures, the philosophy of improved methods of culture, of

rotation of crops, of dairy production, of preserving fruits, meats, &c.

It applies more or less directly to the whole subject of mechanical

expedients.

"2d. Practical instruction in surveying, mensuration, and drawing.

"3d. And by lectures--in botany, geology, zoology, comparative anatomy,

and natural philosophy.

"Some of them--indeed, all of them, if desired--might be pursued

practically, and with the use of apparatus and specimens.

"This course contemplates a period of study of from one year to two and

a half years, according to the qualification of the pupil at the outset.

He appears an hour each day at the blackboard, where he shares the drill

of a class, and where he acquires a facility of illustration, command of

language, an address and thorough consciousness of real knowledge, which

are of more value, in many cases, as you know, than almost any amount of

simple acquisition. He also attends, on an average, about one lecture a

day throughout the year. During the remaining time he is occupied with

experimental work in the laboratory or field.

"The great difficulty with students of agriculture, who might care to

come to the Scientific School, is the expense of living in Cambridge. If

some farmer at a distance of three or four miles from college, where

rents for rooms are low, would open a boarding-house for students of

agriculture in the Scientific School, where the care of a kitchen garden

and some stock might be intrusted to them, and where a farmer's plain

table might be spread at the price at which laborers would be received,

we might hope that our facilities would be taken advantage of on a

larger scale. As it is, but few, comparatively, among our students, come

to qualify themselves for farming."

I should, however, consider the arrangements proposed as temporary, and

finally to be abandoned or made permanent, as experience should dictate.

It may be said, I think, without disparagement to the many distinguished

and disinterested men who have labored for the advancement of

agriculture, that the operations of the government and of the state and

county societies have no plan or system by which, as a whole, they are

guided. The county societies have been and are the chief means of

influence and progress; but they have no power which can be

systematically applied; their movements are variable, and their annual

exhibitions do not always indicate the condition of agriculture in the

districts represented. They have become, to a certain extent, localized

in the vicinity of the towns where the fairs are held; and yet they do

not possess the vigor which institutions positively local would enjoy.

The town clubs hold annual fairs; and these fairs should be made

tributary, in their products and in the interest they excite, to the

county fairs. Let the town fairs be held as early in the season as

practicable, and then let each town send to the county fairs its

first-class premium articles as the contributions of the local society,

as well as of the individual producers. Thus a healthful and generous

rivalry would be stirred up between the towns of a county as well as

among the citizens of each town; and a county exhibition upon the plan

suggested would represent at one view the general condition of

agriculture in the vicinity. No one can pretend that this is

accomplished by the present arrangements. Moreover, the county society,

in its management and in its annual exhibitions, would possess an

importance which it had not before enjoyed. As each town would be

represented by the products of the dairy, the herd, and the field, so it

would be represented by its men; and the annual fair of the county would

be a truthful and complete exposition of its industrial standing and

power.

Out of a system thus broad, popular, and strong, an agricultural college

will certainly spring, if such an institution shall be needed. But is it

likely that in a country where the land is divided, and the number of

farmers is great, the majority will ever be educated in colleges, and

upon strict scientific principles? I am ready to answer that such an

expectation seems to me a mere delusion. The great body of young farmers

must be educated by the example and practices of their elders, by their

own efforts at individual and mutual improvement, and by the influence

of agricultural journals, books, lecturers, and the example of

thoroughly educated men. And, as thoroughly educated men, lecturers,

journals, and books of a proper character, cannot be furnished without

the aid of scientific schools and thorough culture, the farmers, as a

body, are interested in the establishment of all institutions of

learning which promise to advance any number of men, however small, in

the mysteries of the profession; but, when we design a system of

education for a class, common wisdom requires us to contemplate its

influence upon each individual. The influence of a single college in any

state, or in each state of this Union, would be exceedingly limited; but

local societies and travelling lecturers could make an appreciable

impression in a year upon the agricultural population of any state, and

in New England the interest in the subject is such that there is no

difficulty in founding town clubs, and making them at once the agents of

the government and the schools for the people.

In the plan indicated, I have, throughout, assumed the disposition of

the farmers to educate themselves. This assumption implies a certain

degree of education already attained; for a consciousness of the

necessity of education is only developed by culture, learning, and

reflection. Such being the admitted fact, it remains that the farmers

themselves ought at once to institute such means of self-improvement as

are at their command. They are, in nearly every state of this Union, a

majority of the voters, and the controlling force of society and the

government; but I do not from these facts infer the propriety of a

reliance on their part upon the powers which they may thus direct.

However wisely said, when first said, it is not wise to "look to the

government for too much;" and there can be no reasonable doubt of the

ability of the farmers to institute and perfect such measures of

self-education as are at present needed. But the spirit in which they

enter upon this work must be broad, comprehensive, catholic. They will

find something, I hope, of example, something of motive, something of

power, in their experience as friends and supporters of our system of

common school education; and something of all these, I trust, in the

facts that this system is kept in motion by the self-imposed taxation of

the whole people; that all individuals and classes of men, forgetting

their differences of opinion in politics and religion, rally to its

support, as being in itself a safe basis on which may be built whatever

structures men of wisdom and virtue and piety may desire to erect,

whether they labor first and chiefly for the world that is, or for that

which is to come.

FOOTNOTE:

[10] Hon. George S. Hillard.

The great defect in the plan I have presented is this: That no means are