SECRETARY'S REPORT. 135 



cncc may suggest. They arc unwilling to hazard any thing by 

 proposing a plan for adoption which might fail from its being 

 too complex in its character, or too expensive in the outset to 

 find acceptance. They propose, therefore, as the first step in 

 furnishing agricultural education, 



1st. The ingrafting upon our common school education the 

 study of the elementary principles of geology, of agricultural 

 chemistry, of physiology, and of botany. 



They propose that these shall be taught by manuals, in the 

 usual form of question and answer, and that they shall be con- 

 fined to the plainest leading principles applicable to the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil, and prepared in such a manner that it will not 

 depend altogether upon the knowledge of the instructor to make 

 them of use to the learner. 



It is only necessary to appeal to the individual experience of 

 every one for a just estimate of the importance of this simple 

 and inexpensive measure. Our children would, from this slight 

 addition to their usual studies, learn something which would 

 every day be more and more deeply implanted in their minds by 

 their daily walks to the school-room. They could not see a tree 

 send forth its leaves, its flowers, its fruits, or the fresh sod turned 

 over by the plough, or the rain fall from the heavens, or the sun 

 shine upon the earth, without attaching to these now unheeded 

 operations a meaning and a significance, and without inspiring 

 in their minds a spirit of investigation and inquiry, which would 

 be preparing them for the practical pursuits of after life. 



The vital principle in the plan proposed is to start the educa- 

 tion of the future farmer at the earliest possible period, and to 

 do this, the commencement must be in our public schools, while 

 the other parts of a boy's education are going on. But it must 

 not stop here. It has already been remarked, that special 

 schools, academies and colleges, exist for the instruction of 

 youths intended for every other career in life except that of a 

 farmer. They leave the public schools, where they have been 

 well prepared to enter upon the special education for the profes- 

 sion for which they are designed, while the boy who is to be- 

 come a farmer is left to shift for himself. He is dropped upon 

 the farm, as it were, wholly unfitted, wholly unprepared, to reap 

 any advantage from what he has already been taught. His 

 education stops short, just at the moment when a very moderate 



