70 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and schools of agriculture in ■which every branch is taught 

 with extreme detail, including crop-raising, grape-growing, 

 horse and cattle breeding, fish-culture, drainage, forestry, and 

 the care of bees ; all these in addition to original researches 

 in chemistry and in other pertinent sciences. Of these 

 colleges the four highest have eighty professorships, and 

 those of lower degree are proportionately supplied. One 

 academy, that of Proskau, has attached to it seventeen 

 thousand acres of tillage and forest. The little duchy of 

 Baden, with a population less than that of Massachusetts, has 

 twenty agricultural establishments ; and, in the entire German 

 empire, the people are taught nearly on this scale. Perhaps 

 some one will ask. What has this vast network of scientific 

 schools brought to pass? What has this army of highly 

 educated and spectacled professors to show, in exchange for 

 their appg-ratus and salaries? Already I have said that 

 German officials keep a sharp eye on their penny's-worth. 

 Being themselves well scrimped, they are determined that 

 nobody else shall grow too fat, or get pay without full return. 

 A Prussian employe who should leave his post and run to 

 Berlin to look after politics and offices, would first be dis- 

 charged and afterwards clapped in prison. Sometimes I think 

 that a little of such tyranny might have a wholesome effect in 

 our country. 



The case before us makes no exception to the rule of thrift. 

 These professors have earned their wages. They found a 

 country that produced scanty crops of oats, barley and white 

 wine. To-day they show you an abundant yield of everything 

 their soil and climate will allow. Cultures that were feeble, 

 such as those of wheat and sugar-beets, have grown to grand 

 proportions ; waste lands have been reclaimed ; forests planted, 

 grown, and cut according to rule. Nobody there dares sell a 

 false manure with the Argus-eyes of a professor of chemistry 

 ever on him. It will not avail him to publish a ten-dollar 

 analysis from a private assayer. The government chemist 

 says: "Empty out your bags here, and let us examine their 

 contents. If you have been swindling the farmers, to jail 

 you go ! " 



Are we speaking of a land naturally fertile and of a favoring 

 climate? Not so. North Germany is a dreary plain, — the 



