Igg BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



These arc all questions wliicli ought to be answered, and your 

 committee feel constrained to answer them all in the negative, 

 some reasons for which they propose to give. 



In the opinion of your committee, it would require an endow- 

 ment of nearly half a million of dollars to purchase land, erect 

 buildings and machinery, procure tools, import different kinds 

 and varieties of animals and seeds, pay the salaries of teachers, 

 superintendents and laborers, and meet the various incidental 

 exp(?nses of such an establishment. This is a very respectable 

 sum to devote to such a purpose, even for a State; but if it 

 promised any results adapted to our wants and circumstances, 

 proportionate to the outlay, or that could not be as effectually 

 secured, and at less cost, in other ways and by more simple 

 modes, we should be in favor of the outlay; but this is not the 

 fact, as it seems to us. 



Such an endowment would afford, at six per cent., an annual 

 income of thirty thousand dollars, and your committee would 

 respectfully submit if the annual appropriation of one half this 

 sum, through the agency of our agricultural societies, in the 

 bestowmeut of premiums large enough to be an object worthy 

 an effort to obtain, and if it be thought best, for specific objects, 

 Avould not be likely to secure a greater'number and more satis- 

 factory results, than could be attained by any experiments iu 

 any one locality in the State. We have a great variety of soil, 

 and some considerable variety of climate — enough materially to 

 vitiate an experiment made in one section for another. For 

 example : A breed of stock adapted to the sea-board; is not the 

 best adapted to farmers in the interior. S^ of field crops. 

 "What succeeds best and is the most profitable on the sea-board 

 and on one kind of soil, would be unprofitable or entirely fail in 

 the interior, or on a dilTerent soil. Hence it is not possible 

 that such an institution should meet our varied wants as a State, 

 merely in regard to experiments. Nothing short of a trial in 

 all sections of the State, and on all varieties of soil, can make 

 any experiment of general benefit to our agricultural interests. 



Another thing. Such an institution cannot possibly furnish 

 facilities for the education of all who arc to be farmers in the 

 State, As a necessity, only a select number of persons can 

 enjoy the direct benefits of such an institution. It can bear no 



