DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINXS. 293 



PRESENTATION OF PRIZES. 



First prize, gold iwatch ; second, silver watch ; third, fountain 

 pen. 



Dr. L. S. Merrill. 



It has been a very ,great privilege to listen to the splendid 

 papers prepared and read by these young men. All of us have 

 taken pleasure in offering the inducements to bring out the best 

 thought, the best effort, of the young men in the state who are 

 studying agriculture in secondary schools. While these prizes 

 v^-ill have value in themselves to these young men, when they 

 see them they will think of this association, of the membership 

 from which they came, and, boys, to my mind the great value 

 of these rewards will be the result of the effort you have made 

 to win them. You must remember that the World is full of 

 need of straight thinking, swift acting and efficient working 

 men. You are now getting your training, and while Earl Smith 

 in speaking of knowledge made the comment that "Knowledge 

 is power," we must couple with it just a little qualification. 

 That is an old statement, but a man may have knowledge and 

 never be able to use it, ,so that knowledge and the abihty to use 

 knowledge, is power. You are getting your training, and the 

 thing you want along with that training is the ability to use the 

 knowledge you get. In Oither words, it ,must be practical, it 

 must be useful. You must know the why of things. You are 

 just beginning to fasten upon your minds' this fact, that agri- 

 culture is not the sort of hit-OT-miss, guesswork proposition 

 that you have sometimes thought it was ; that it is built upon 

 exact laws ; that science is the tool the farmer has today, if he 

 can apply it. 



It is a very great privilege to be selected by this association 

 to present these tokens to you and I shall do so with satisfaction 

 knowing that they are worthily bestowed, that you have earned 

 them. And .we present them with the hope that this is just 

 the beginning; that you will understand that these watches 



