THE NEEDS OF AGRICULTURE. 61 



mainly devote themselves to scientific investigation. This is a pet idea fre- 

 quently among those connected with the schools of agriculture that are an 

 annex to a great State University, and have but few agricultural students. 

 They propose to make up in quality whatthey lack in numbers, and so main- 

 tain that these agricultural annexes are demanded and are of great impor- 

 tance, because a small per cent of the few graduates are successful in the 

 scientific, rather tlian the practical work of agriculture. 



This is a scientific age. The tendencies of the last decade or two have 

 been very marked in opposition to the old and so long approved methods of 

 education. Possibly we are swinging to the other extreme in our theories 

 and practice, and laying too much stress upon so-called scientific training. 

 True it is that science and scientific, so-called, cover a multitude of sins. 

 Science is fashionable, and scientific is applied to almost everything. And 

 so would-be aspiring scientists are often intemperate and arbitrary in their 

 claims. One has said of such men, "Their intellects are mischievously 

 crammed with science. How much we know is not the best question, but 

 how we got what we know, and what we can do with it; and above all, what 

 it has made of us. The tendency of training is now to subordinate the soul 

 to that which should be merely its endowment and adornment, to turn the 

 thinker into a mere walking encyclopedia, text-book, or circle of the 

 mechanic arts; not to produce the highest type of man." 



Is there not danger that this clamor about science may, nay, does, often 

 turn the heads of young men from agriculture? I have sometimes thought 

 that there was too strong a putting of the claims and promises of science as 

 opening the pathway to fame and fortune to young men, who have at Agri- 

 cultural Colleges sought for a practical education, and too little stress and 

 empliasis laid upon the field of honor and usefulness open before them on 

 the farm, in actual agriculture. That the sympathies and labors of all inter- 

 ested in Agricultural Colleges should tend mainly in this direction, rather 

 than in the other, I most firmly believe. If it had been so from the begin- 

 ning. Agricultural Colleges would have been less criticised and vastly more 

 useful and popular with the people. 



Not that true science is to be discredited, nor one iota detracted from the 

 large credit due to real scientific investigators, but in the language of one 

 whose years and position in the scientific world give weight to his utterances: 

 "I deprecate the claim to special attention made by inexperienced stumblers 

 on forgotten or unnoticed facts, on the sole ground of discovery, and who 

 babble over the most profound questions, when the amount of their efficient 

 work in any branch of science is measured with a foot rule ; while those 

 whose entire lives have been but one exhausting struggle with the shapes 

 which people the darkness of science, speak with bated breath and downcast 

 eyes of these great mysteries." 



So far as Agricultural Science is concerned, have we not too many claims 

 and theories from scientists of the kind first described ? ready babblers on 

 everything that relates to the theory and practice of Agriculture? (Go ye 

 not after them. They are blind guides.) They offer floods of advice on 

 subjects of which they have the most superficial knowledge. These penny- 

 a-liners are ready to traverse any subject in Agriculture or Horticulture at a 

 moment's notice. Wise in theory and ready in utterance, they rarely test 

 their theories or practice what they preach. 



Bulwer in one of his essays tells an admirable story which illustrates the 



