264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



anything new, otherwise than to exhort you to avail yourselves of 

 the opportunities for improvement thus held out to you. Perhaps 

 you will allow me to say a few words of the latter as a source of 

 practical improvement looking from the stand-point which we have 

 erected. Suppose that in any of your towns you get half or even 

 one-fourth of the farmers and mechanics to unite in one of these 

 associations for mutual improvement and information. During 

 two-thirds of the year you meet weekly for the discussion and 

 consideration of practical subjects. You all meet on a level, are 

 governed by parliamentary rules, have a subject which you can all 

 understand and in which you are perfectly at home, are among 

 your friends and neighbors, and have your rights as much re- 

 spected as though you were in the halls of legislation. You are 

 enabled at the same time to communicate what you know of the 

 matter before you, get what others know, become accustomed to 

 convey your ideas so as to be clearly understood, make yourselves 

 acquainted with parliamentary rules and usages, and thus acquire 

 a self reliance which nothing but practice and experience will 

 give. Thus you may qualfy yourselves for the places in social 

 and public life which too often heretofore none but the professional 

 man has been supposed to be qualified to fill. The good to be 

 gained in this direction will of course be much greater to the 

 young than to those of us who are in middle life or already pass- 

 ing down the hill. Here we have a school for the young men and 

 women of our State, and when 1 say men and ivomen, I mean it ; 

 for it is folly, in this enlightened day, to say that men should have 

 more or greater privileges or opportunities for improvement in 

 social and practical knowledge than women. Here we have an 

 institution right at our very doors, with next to no expense, 

 and available to the humblest boy or girl, which, while it 

 gives us all the advantages of a det)ating society or lyceum, at the 

 same time stores the mind with just that knowledge which will be 

 needed in after life to enable them to discharge, with credit and 

 acceptance, its various duties, and we thus lay the foundation for 

 what we have just spoken of, viz : a higher grade of social, intel- 

 lectual and industrial life. Again, the reports and other agricul- 

 tural works, which will naturally find their way into the hands of 

 the club, will form the nucleus of a library, which every club 

 should have, and thus give the younger members an opportunity 

 to gain some lasting good during the leisure hours of winter, by 

 devoting to useful reading and study the time which is so often 



