INDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 585 



Within a half century fifty or more agricultural colleges and nearly 

 as many experiment stations have been founded and the sentiment among 

 farmers has changed from sneering derision and half-hearted toleration to 

 hearty and loyal support. Tyithin the same length of time, the United 

 States Department of Agriculture has risen from a Bureau for the distri- 

 bution of congressional favors to a mighty power for good in agricultural 

 work. 



More agricultural books have been written in the past decade — good 

 ones, too— than in any century preceding. Agricultural papers have in- 

 creased enormously in numbers and in usefulness. 



The farmers' institute is still an infant— scarcely in its teens— but it is 

 a goodly child, and, fed by popular sentiment, is growing and is now a 

 tower of strength to agriculture. 



I can but mention other forces, as the Grange, Farmers' Clubs, Home 

 Reading Courses, University Extension Work, and Nature Study. Nearly 

 all of these are of recent growth and all have been a means of training 

 and of education to the farmer. 



I thus set before you the facts as to what training has done in the 

 immediate past as the best means of illustrating what the opportunities 

 are for those who are now thinking of training themselves for agriculture. 

 I want also to hush up any statement or any thought "that education 

 for the farmer is all bosh," as we sometimes hear from those who have 

 mighty little or none of it. And now, vvith your minds filled with the 

 achievements and facts of education and training, I want to briefly dis- 

 cuss the methods and needs of agricultural training. 



Scarcely any two men agree as to how the farmer's son or the farmer 

 himself should be educated. If we suppose that the training is to be given 

 at an agricultural college, one man says that such a school should teach 

 practical agriculture— how to plow, till, prune, milk, bind, and mow- 

 to earn one's bread by the sweat of the brow. A second wants a school 

 of science to teach botany, chemistry and the like. One wants the school 

 to support itself. Another insists that it should not compete with the 

 farmer in selling produce and should therefore be endowed. A third 

 wants an experimental farm and a fourth says the model farm is the 

 thing. 



The divergencies arise, in the main, however, from two points of view, 

 namely as to whether the advocate favors the science the most or gives 

 his preference to the art of farming. We" come now to a discussion of 

 these two issues. 



The difference between erudition, that is, mere book learning, and true 

 education, is nowhere better illustrated than in the study of agriculture. 

 "Erudition," says Herbert Spencer, "is knowledge gained from books. 

 Education is erudition put in action— Is knowledge plus practice." Now 

 the student of agriculture, in college or out, should seek not alone the 



