182 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



vented the rapid growth, of cities and limited their size. Now, 

 sanitary science makes it possible to check pestilence, and steam 

 transportation makes it possible to carry food half way round the 

 earth. Famines are always local, and formerly each nation, indeed 

 each section, lived more independently of others than now. Tele- 

 graphs and steam have made distant countries neighbors, and all 

 the world kin in a way our fathers little dreamed of, and a fi'uitful 

 year in America may prevent a famine in Europe; while war, that 

 other great curse, is becoming less and less a destroyer. So, cities 

 and towns will continue to grow, and will breed a larger and larger 

 proportion of our population; they have their own special facilities 

 for the education of youth, which facilities have been enormously 

 increased and improved within our time, and the relative import- 

 ance to the nation of town and country population is rapidly chang- 

 ing, both in a political and social sense. 



Heretofore the vast majority of our youth, I may say very nearly 

 all, had at least some cormtry education, and by far the largest 

 class, as a class, had some experience on a farm. Hereafter that 

 may not and probably will not be true. It is no longer true in 

 New England, and the educational influences of the farm have 

 thei'efore a new importance, to both those who are interested in. 

 agriculture and who are interested in education. 



But then, anything relating to the education of youth is ever 

 fresh and ever new, because it ever has to do with a new genera- 

 tion of men and women. 



The subject of my lecture is not a new one to me. I was bom 

 and reared on a farm; all the associations of my childhood and 

 all the traditions of my ancestors for several generations related 

 to the farm; so I speak from experience in that direction. 1 am 

 now a teacher, and have spent more than twenty-seven years teach- 

 ing; first in academies, then in colleges, which have had among their 

 pupils both country and city youth ; so I can speak from experi- 

 ence derived from that source of observation. As an American 

 citizen, interested in the history of our beloved country, I have 

 studied the influences which have shaped its progress and which 

 have moulded the lives of our most eminent men ; so this part of 

 the subject has long been a subject of study. As Professor of 

 Agriculture for many years, the influence of farm life on the 

 intellectual status of the people has naturally and necessarily come 

 within the province of my professional study. Lastly, but by no 



