SECRETARY'S REPORT. 47 



labor might be invested in it with as much certainty of paying a 

 remunerating dividend as when ventured in any other business. 



Demonstrate to the community that farming would be profitable, 

 and capital would flow abundantly into this channel, and so capital, 

 intelligence and labor, would all cooperate to bring agriculture to 

 a high degree of perfection ; then, and only then, will it thrive — 

 when this confidence is secured, and the necessary means freely 

 applied. 



• A class of men like the stewards of England would be educated, 

 who might be employed by the wealthy to superintend the farms 

 they purchase, when, advanced in years, they engage in a new 

 branch of business for which they have had no previous experience 

 and training, and so by aid of such an overseer incur no risk of 

 disastrous failure. 



Already there is a demand for such men which cannot now be 

 supplied. The College contemplated alone can furnish the agents 

 who shall be entrusted with the funds awaiting investment, and 

 who can obtain for their services a larger compensation than the 

 average income of professional men. 



Teachers and lecturers would be properly qualified for our 

 schools of various grades who may radiate the light of science and 

 intelligence to our remotest borders. Thus " many shall run to 

 and fro and knowledge shall be increased." 



For want of this scientific knowledge our whole country has 

 seriously suffered. Our most fertile fields have been impoverished 

 by an unwise system of husbandry. During a long series of years, 

 cattle and grain have been conveyed away to a distant market ; the 

 products of their final decomposition have flowed down our sewers 

 into rivers, and been lost in the ocean, and no equivalent has been 

 returned to the soil to repair the waste. Our soils once abundantlj'' 

 possessed all those mineral constituents essential to the growth of 

 plants. 



True wisdom, which scientific knowledge imparts, would have 

 taught the farmer to ascertain the chemical ingredients of the 

 products transported, and would have prompted him to return a 

 sufficient amount in the form of manures. Then their primeval 

 fertility would not have been impaired ; then we should not have 

 to regret the disastrous effect of the " spoliation system," as it has 

 been significantly called. 



In many of the oldest States the average product of wheat has 



