No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 319 



iMiriiij; (lirsc four years we liavc uoticM'd, and you have noticed, 

 marked advaneeiuent in (he manner and the mode of carrying on 

 farm oiieradons in Pennsylvania, in the h'ne of animal indusiry, in 

 the management of the dairy, in horticultural lines, in the prepara- 

 tion of tlu,' soil and the seed bed and in the growing of the legumin 

 ous jdants intended to draw down fertility from the air and plant 

 it in the soil we cultivate; in all these questions, my friends, what 

 a marked improvement is stamped in every line; and we are egotisti- 

 cal enough to believe that a large portion of that at least was 

 stimulated and brought about by the persistent teaching of those 

 engaged in Farmers' Institute work. 



I want to say just a word to the Lecturers. Most of my remarks 

 have been to the County Managers of Institutes. I want to say to 

 you, my friends, Lecturers at Farmers' Institutes, that we have 

 come to a time in the history of this work in Pennsylvania in which a 

 man to succeed and do his best must be no novice. He must be a 

 man or woman equii)ped for this work, capable of imparting the 

 knowledge and the practice which he possesses to the audience 

 which he is to address. It is no child's play. We have come to a 

 time in the history of agriculture in Pennsylvania, my friends, in 

 which the man who undertalces to address an audience must know 

 whereof he speaks and be of a teachable spirit on all occasions. 

 The reason for this is largely due to the fact that the farmers of 

 Pennsylvania are to-day an educated people. They read and think, 

 and year by year they bring to bear upon their farm operations a 

 better cultivated brain and more accurate knowledge of the princi- 

 ples which "underlie the line of farming in which they are engaged, 

 and the Farmers' Institute Lectui'er who succeeds now in Pennsyl- 

 vania must be, not only abreast of the times, but he must be a 

 little in advance. He must know of the things whereof he speaks; 

 know all these things and know nature. Why, my friends, there are 

 only two ways a successful teacher at the Farmers' Institute may 

 know. He may have studied agriculture, chemistry or botany and 

 all lines of scientific knowledge; and that is right. He cannot teach 

 them properly unless he has spent time in the study of them. But 

 that is not all. After they have been studied theoretically and 

 learned and pounded into these brains and minds of ours, there is 

 something else. After this is completely studied mentally, when the 

 man has worked it out somewhere in the soil, or the shrub, or the 

 tree, or the plant, or the roots of them, he is the better equipped to 

 impart that knowledge to his neighbor. That is what I mean by 

 this, my fellow lecturers. We come to that time in which, in mv 

 judgment, the very best qualifications must be demanded and noth- 

 ing short of that accepted. So it is for you to decide at these meet- 

 ings. 



