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gan belongs the honor of having taken the first active steps in the 

 premises. Her University has closed, within the past year, one course 

 of lectures upon agriculture, which was well attended. Now that our 

 own State has set the ball in motion, let her citizens, her farmers and 

 mechanics, and indeed all who feel an interest in the proper education 

 of our youth, press upon our Legislature the necessity of engrafting 

 upon the Normal School system, as well as upon our State University, 

 departments dedicated exclusively to agriculture and the kindred arts. 



In addition to the qualifications wmch our laws require of male 

 teachers in our district schools, let them be required also to show them- 

 selves competent to teach the theory of correct farming. Indeed, the 

 opinion is fast gaining ground, that a distinct institution should be or- 

 ganized under the auspices of the State government, where practical 

 and scientific agriculture, chemistry, botany, mathematics, and the kin- 

 dred sciences, should be taught ; where the practical management o f 

 the farm, dairy, and stock, is learned. With such a powerful auxiliary 

 as this, the husbandmen of Michigan would rank, in point of intelli- 

 gence and usefulness, first in the land. 



Taking into account the great improvements which have been made 

 in our country, within the last quarter of a centuiy, in the various de- 

 partments of labor, the greatly increasing interest which is exhibited in 

 its behalf, and the powerful inducements which are being held out to 

 sustain and foster it, one cannot form any adequate idea of the progress 

 which it will have made at the end of the next twenty-five years. 



To you, working men of Cass county, belongs the duty of throwing 

 your talents and experience into the scale of progress, to swell that 

 great aggregate of useful and practical knowledge, which the present 

 generation is required to work out for itself, and for the generation- 

 which is to come after it. As the means to acquit yourselves honora- 

 bly of the task, educate yourselves, your sons and daughters, in all that 

 appertains to the calling which you or they may have selected to pur- 

 sue through life ; fit them to govern States, to control flocks and herds, 

 to sow and to reap — teach them that it is as honorable to control the 

 one, as to govern the other ; and above all, teach them to do well what 

 their hands find to do. Encourage agricultural societies, and the cir- 

 culation of agricultural books and papers among your friends and 

 neighbors; and here I would suggest the propriety of encovu-aging, 



