connectio:n' of the board with the college. 221 



Dr. Geo. B. Loring of Salem, delivered the following lecture on 



The connection of the State Board of Agriculture with the 



Agricultural College. 



Gentlemen : — Agricultural education is yet in its infancy. The 

 business of farming has, it is true, attracted the attention of the 

 most enterprising and thoughtful in all ages ; the statesman and 

 political economist have recognized its importance to society and 

 to the state ; science has explored its mysteries ; to the wealthy 

 and ruling classes it has furnished opportunities for gratifying the 

 finest tastes and adorning the earth ; to the laborer it has always 

 brought the necessaries of life ; it has never yet failed ; and it is 

 as diverse in all its processes as are the soils, and climates, and 

 markets, and social and civil organizations, on the face of the 

 globe. Every prosperous and cultivated people has an intei'est 

 in agriculture. A State without a rural population is but half a 

 State. A country without products from the land is no country 

 at all. And whether we turn to the semi-barbarism of Asia, or to 

 the half explored regions of Africa and the islands of the southern 

 seas, or to the refinement and poverty of Europe, or to the social 

 equality of our own land, we find everywhere an appeal to the 

 earth by the devoted cultivator, and a liberal response to the call. 

 Agriculture is as old as man, and as universal. And yet we 

 search in vain for any system of agricultural education among 

 ancient records ; and we look in vain for any entirely successful 

 system in modern times. The early books on agriculture are 

 chiefly valuable as a history of the superstitions and popular 

 delusions and daily tasks of the olden times ; and the later books 

 are an interesting record of the facts brought out by practical 

 men, and of the efforts of science to classify those facts, and^o 

 draw from them positive rules of action. But we find no satisfac- 

 tory system of education. 



This is the more extraordinary, when we remember, how always 

 and everywhere the r|ind of man has labored to throw light upon 

 an occupation which is recognized as the fundamental art. Among 

 the treatises on government and society which have been produced 

 by the great intellects of every age, may be classed the works of 

 those who have taught mankind how to divide, own and till their 

 lands. And I have often thought that no library would be more 

 interesting, curious and instructive, than one containing all the 

 volumes written to enlighten the husbandman, from the days of 



