40 Aiiicricaii Horticultural Society. 



This wide- spread sentiment is, it seems to me, one of the saddest mis- 

 takes of tlic ago. It jiroposos an education as deficient in general mental 

 culture as the old classical schools arc lacking in scientific and technical 

 training. The true education that will make broad-minded, forceful men 

 of our bright boys must embrace all that is best and all that is possible of 

 botii the old and the new systems. Let us by all means shed all the light of 

 science on the ditliculi problems of agriculture— let us teach engineering 

 and drainage and stock management and veterinary i)ractice ; but let us 

 not try to eliminate the Latin from the nomenclature of science or go into 

 editorial s])asms at the sight of a pile of Greek roots. 



I believe that the farmer will never take his proper jilace as a director 

 in great ailUirs of economy and statesmanship until he is educated as the 

 lawyer, the minister, the physician, manufacturer, merchdnt and statesman 

 are educated; until he becomes a student, if not a master, in all lines of 

 classical, literary, lesthetic and scientific culture, as have the controlling men 

 who gauge our policies and direct our all'airs. The plea so earnestly and 

 frequently made against classical and literary teaching in our agricultural 

 colleges is a plea for mental narrowness and intellectual incapacity. The 

 technically educated farmer may guide the plow to turn the truest furrow 

 but he may not be able to do much good in holding the helm of state. 

 Facility in forging plowshares, in turning the parts of an engine, in grafting 

 and training fruit trees, in the economical care of stock and the treatment 

 of sick animals — all these accomplishments so essential to the artisan and 

 the farmer as such— nevertheless fail to qualify him for the higher social 

 duties and the solemn responsibilities of the citizen who should be foremost 

 of men in controlling the great policies of the commonwealth. In fact, a 

 well trained faculty for tile drainage is not a liberal education. Cincinnatus 

 "vas called from the plow t«^ the chieftaincy of a people, not because his hand 

 could hold the plow well, but because his educated brain could master the 

 great problems of the state. The men who have made farming and horti- 

 culture a noble occupation, who have given dignity to labor, who have 

 voiced the needs of agriculture and the Utngings of industry, are not 

 the men who have had simply a dexterous manual skill, but they are 

 men who.se minds have had that generous training and culture in all the 

 learning of the ages, as well as the science of today, which have given them 

 a masterful i)osition among the best men of the time. 



FORESTRY. 



I should be recreant to the duty of this hour if 1 did not call your atten- 

 tion once metre, as I have often done before, to the commanditig question 

 of forestry. To one who has watched the deforesting work of one generation 

 of men in all the woo Hand portions of this country, and noted the gradual 

 change of climate from one of mild conditions to one of extremes as the 

 great conservative forests have disappeared, it would seem that no appeal 



