Now it may be well asked, by what agency this needful service can be 

 rendered to the Agricultural interest, so efficaciously as by a well 

 endowed and well appointed school of Agricultural Science? Such 

 institution is to be presumed to be in possession of the results of past 

 observation and experience, and enabled to reason successfully from 

 the known to the unknown ; thus framing conclusions in advance of the 

 art in its existing conditions, probable, and if true, of value to the 

 practical farmer. 



But a conclusion of science in advance of art, is not entitled to univer- 

 sal and confident reception, till subjected to the proper practical test of 

 -its truth. The experimental farm enables the Agricultural College to 

 perform this service for the farming interest, under conditions which are 

 a safeguard against those incidental and unobserved causes of error, 

 which are apt to affect ordinary farming experiment. 



There are thousands of agricultural problems of great practical interest 

 to the farmer, whose early and undoubted solution may be best expected 

 from the Agricultural College, so endowed and so appointed, that no 

 philosophical conclusion, suggestive of progress and improvement, and 

 involving outlay in its adoption, need go forth to the community until 

 authoritatively tested through the agency of the experimental farm. 



The functions of the Agricultuial College are, then, threefold. 1 . In- 

 structional ; 2. Analytic ; 3. Experimental. 



In its first character, it is charged with the conservation and inculcation 

 of existing agricultural knowledge, to the end that the candidates for 

 eminence in this vocation, may carry into the field of their labors, that 

 professional preparation which the advanced condition of the art now 

 imperatively demands. 



In its second ofiice, the Agricultural College is made immediately sub- 

 sidiary to the operations of the practical farmer, by enabling him, through 

 a special analysis, to apply the science, already acquired, to the circum- 

 stances by Avhich he is surrounded, and the physical elements with which 

 he has to deal. 



Lastly, by bringing science into immediate contact with practice, and 

 furnishing it, through a suitable endowment, with ample means for pro- 

 secuting its researches and experiments intelligently, cautiously, and, 

 therefore, successfully, the Agricultural College is destined to accomplish, 

 in the line of valuable discovery, what could be hardly expected from 



