132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



industry. Every year, as it passes, finds us with an increasing 

 number to be fed, who are not producers of food. The time 

 has arrived, when it can be made profitable from the ready 

 markets which are afforded from our numerous and increasing 

 manufactories, and from a growing commerce, for farmers to 

 apply themselves diligently to increasing the production of 

 food, and to call in the aid of science and educated skill to 

 assist his labors. Other arts have been developed than those 

 of the^iusbandman, outstripping in their career, those which 

 are exercised in agriculture. The incentives to improvement 

 in this, tbe highest art, are not wanting, and it is for those who 

 have charge of the public weal to give a right direction to the 

 efforts now making to bring the practice of agriculture, by the 

 aid of education, into harmony, and upon an equality, with 

 other kinds of industry. 



The foundation for the intelligent pursuit of every business is 

 laid in our common school system. So far as it goes, it 

 answers every purpose, and if any complaint could be made, 

 it would be, perhaps, that it aimed at too much — that some 

 tilings are taught that might better be omitted. One fact, 

 however, is certain, that nothing is taught in our public schools 

 which has any special bearing upon the future education of 

 that large class whose lives are devoted to the cultivation 

 of the soil, and stranger still, this class is the only one that 

 cannot get the special instruction necessary for it anywhere 

 else. There are private schools, academics and colleges for 

 the education of youth for all other callings in life, but none 

 fur the farmer, who requires more than any other class a 

 special training for his profession. The fact that the greater 

 proportion of all labor is farm labor, seems to have been over- 

 looked in the studies prescribed in the common schools. The 

 simple teachings which appeal to the daily senses and to nat- 

 ural objects, have been too much neglected. The committee, 

 without desiring to go into a minute criticism upon the instruc- 

 tion which is afforded, claim for agriculture a place in the 

 system of public education ; they assert for that interest the 

 right to have introduced a few elementary studies which might 

 profitably occupy a portion of the time of every child, wlfatevcr 

 his future occupation might be, but which are of inestimable 

 benefit to those 'who are to become farmers. These studies 



