338 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



err of the best way in taking care of them, the humau race has 

 gone on very comfortably these many years, and seems likely to 

 be continued for many years to come. But, gentlemen, the 

 "science of medicine" has lengthened human life, and those 

 nations that best understand it have lengthened their days by the 

 greatest number ; and as we as a community better understand it, 

 our days shall be lengthened also. And so it will be in the matter 

 of farming. Just in proportion as intelligence is difliised with 

 reference to the principles that underlie it, will be the success of 

 agriculture. 



Now, gentlemen, I do not mean to say that every student who 

 graduates from the Agricultural College is to burden his back 

 with his pack, or take his saddle-bags and travel about practising 

 agriculture, exactly as many arrant quacks travel about practising 

 medicine. I do not mean that ; nor do I mean that they shall 

 settle in the community exactly on the same terms as physicians, 

 and there hold themselves ready for calls to treat gouty soils, or 

 repair broken implements, or anything of the sort. But, with 

 your patience, I will try to make myself entirely understood. I was 

 happy to notice, this afternoon, in the exhibition of some of the prin- 

 ciples of physical geography, an intelligent appreciation of the 

 fact that the earth's structure, — those great natural feature lines 

 which were drawn by the finger of the Almighty in the first place 

 — had something to do with the location of cities, had something 

 to do with the distribution and the pursuits of men upon the 

 earth ; that they are determined, primarily, by those facts. More- 

 over, the physical geography of a country gives rise to its geol- 

 ogy ; the one is parent of the other. The fact that we have 

 mountain ranges running as ours do, and river systems such as 

 ours, is settling the future geology of this continent. We are 

 having a great delta formed at the mouths of the Mississippi, and 

 tliore are various changes going on upon the face of the country 

 which will result in a diflercnt order of things, some thousands of 

 years in the future. We are learning that the present condition 

 of things is the result of a physical geography very unlike that 

 which now exists, and thai physical geography determines our 

 geology and determines the character of our soil. These young 

 gentlemen will reason rightl}' in this matter. The very facts 

 which they are learning of phj^sical geography will enable them 

 to go out upon the soil and by inspection say what its character 

 is, exactly as the physician goes into the sick room and makes his 



