324 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the whole State, and the number of persons engaged in agricul- 

 ture, is nearly equal to that of all other professions united. The 

 number engaged and the amount of capital employed entitles 

 them, all things being equal, to the highest position in the social, 

 financial and political world. 



There is no necessity because a man is a farmer, that he should 

 be an ignoramus; the boy who is to be trained for agricultural 

 pursuits is entitled to as careful and thorough an education, as in 

 the case of other professions. And the very nature of his calling 

 is favorable to life-long investigations and attainments in scholar- 

 ship. I do not wish to be understood, that all boys designed 

 for this profession can and must be " liberally " educated, in the 

 common acceptation of the term, but I do most earnestly protest 

 against the prevalent idea that they/of all others, can afford to be 

 ignorant. There is no necessity because a man is a fanner, that 

 he should be coarse and vulgar in his tast< s, with no love for the 

 grand and beautiful Is not the study of nature better adapted 

 than other studies to develop our tastes, and enable us to discern 

 beauty, order, proportion and symmetry? And who is brought 

 into such intimate communion with nature in all her visible forms 

 as the farmer? With no sympathy with any sickly sentimentality 

 in this connection, I protest against the farmers ignoring taste 

 and beauty and the cultivation of his finer faculties. If he would 

 develop these powers, if he would surround his home with trees 

 and flowers, and cultivate in his children the spirit of gladness 

 and beauty, how richly would he be repaid by the blessings which 

 would be showered upon him, and how precious would be the 

 remembrance which his children would carry with them from such 

 homes as these. 



There is no necessity because a man is a farmer that he should 

 be poor. It will not be in his power to amass such immense 

 wealth as individuals in other pursuits have occasionally done. 

 But it is within their reach, as a class, to become more generally 

 independent and wealthy than any other professions. As an illus- 

 tration of what can be accomplished with only common advan- 

 tages, I had marked some cases given in the United States 

 agricultural reports to be used in this connection, but finding my 

 lecture extending to such length, they are omitted. 



There is no necessity because a man is a farmer that he should 

 occupy an iuferior position in social and political life ; but, on the 

 contrary, there are the strongest reasons why, as a class, they 



