12 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



The scholar should know what wheat cats, and how to supply- 

 it with food, just as well as he knows what an ox eats, and how 

 to feed it. He should know the different diet of the potato, 

 and how to feed it, as he knows the different diet of the cat, 

 and how to feed it. The cat does not live on grass, nor the ox 

 on mice. Wheat and potatoes do not eat precisely the same 

 food, yet who thinks of preparing the field for the. wheat differ- 

 ently from that for the potato, as he would prepare differently 

 the stall for the ox, and the dish for the cat. Taste of the 

 quince and the pear, — have they not fed on different food ? Do 

 not asparagus and squashes demand different diet? All this, 

 and much more, children should be taught in our schools. 

 Then, when they go upon the farm, it will he with the curiosity 

 with which the chemist enters his laboratory — not simply to see 

 how much money they can get, but how much they can enjoy 

 and discover. 



I press this point. Our system of common school education 

 is seriously, not to say radically defective in this respect. 

 Arithmetic, geography and grammar arc studied to the neglect 

 of other more important and attractive branches of knowledge. 

 Teachers should be trained in our Normal Schools, not in 

 algebra and geometry only, or chiefly, but in botany, and chem- 

 istry, and meteorology. Three hundred and forty-five students 

 were at the State Normal Schools in 1857. Of these, one-half 

 are the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics, and all 

 are to be teachers in our public schools 1 — the only school which 

 a great portion of the children will ever attend to fit them for 

 the duties of life. The expense of these schools, exclusive of 

 the real estate, is about fourteen thousand dollars annually, 

 and worthily is it applied in spite of the deficiency -which I shall 

 name. I find no special statement in the reports, of the amount 

 of time given to the different studies pursued ; but in the 

 Westfield School I find botany optional, one of the most impor- 

 tant studies to farmers, and also bookkeeping. At Bridgewater, 

 the proportion of time given to literature, as distinguished from 

 scientific studies, is as three hundred to live hundred; only 

 three-fifths as much time is given to the sciences on which all 

 agricultural and mechanical labor and success are based, as to 

 other studies. Whether botany can be studied, even if desired, 

 i-> not stated. The reports of the schools at Framingham and 



