EELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO AGRICULTURE. 27 



reward in the termination of these remarks. I observe, in 

 the last place, that science promises to agriculture benefits 

 in the development of the noblest crop which any soil pro- 

 duces, — the manhood upon which the State builds its best, 

 and on which, in our own land, the intelligent preservation of 

 our liberties depends. 



You do not care, I presume, to listen to any extravagant 

 eulogies of the farmer's place in the social world. Your 

 work is hard, your gains slow, in comparison with other 

 occupations, whose charms, often delusive, keep the tide 

 from country to city ever on the flow. Some of you have 

 felt a vague discontent with fortune, which has bound you to 

 the homestead acres. Ah, well ! there are many more, and 

 successful ones too, as the world goes, who envy you the 

 narrow compass of your cares ; the cooler and serener air in 

 which you toil. But aside from feeling, it is a solid fact, the 

 State has learned to expect much of you. For common-sense 

 to balance mad theorists ; for economy to rebuke luxury and 

 extravagance ; for the wise conservatism of property in land, 

 as the needed counterpoise to reckless revolutionaries, you 

 are held responsible. The simple institutions which lie at 

 the foundations of the fathers' government survive best 

 among you. More earnestly, perhaps, than any other class, 

 you discuss and settle for yourselves, with no lack of inde- 

 pendence, the great questions of the day. More than the 

 vagrant dwellers in cities, you urged to its decision the 

 national verdict against social wrong, and when the call came, 

 you filled the army's ranks. Strong, libertj^-loving men it is 

 your duty, as your tendency, to be. It is not likely that the 

 youngest child of to-day will ever see the time when the 

 Republic will not totter to its fall, if you are less than this. 



It seems equally certain that the education of the coming 

 age will be largely scientific. This influence will reach the 

 agricultural world in many ways. Through the common 

 school, through the modification of farm implements and 

 methods, through the public press. It Avill act, with its 

 unsettling power, here good, here evil, on forms and institu- 

 tions. The intelligence which it will develop may not 

 always be a blessing; it may even strike savagely at the 

 very restraints which are needed to make it a blessing. Our 



