OBLIGATIONS TO SCIENCE. 229 



readiness in emergency, and steady common sense in the prac- 

 tical duties of agriculture. 



Now, it is to remove this trouble, and to give the weak a fair 

 chance with the strong, that careful agricultural investigation, 

 and the application of science to the business of farming, have 

 been so earnestly urged and so liberally provided for in our 

 day. I cannot tell precisely how much benefit is to be derived 

 from our labors. But I am sure that we may here learn of 

 each other the laws by which agriculture can be conducted, and 

 the principles which we may profitably apply to the land, and 

 to the care of our flocks and herds. And when I call to mind 

 the sure prosperity, the domestic happiness, the social repose 

 which gather round a rural home here in New England, or 

 which God intended should gather round such a home, I 

 cannot believe that the tastes acquired in this assembly will be 

 wasted, or that the knowledge acquired here will be useless. 

 To the substantial prosperity which agriculture, even in its 

 rudest forms, has always presented, and to the comfort and 

 happiness which have always been accorded to the farmer's 

 home, and which some of us have found there, are now added 

 the great results which science lays at the feet of this as she 

 does of every other pursuit iu life, in our day. The problem 

 which the student of agriculture is called upon to solve is how 

 far he can apply scientific rules to the economy of the farm, 

 and how largely the general prosperity of an agricultural com- 

 munity can be increased by the introduction of intellectual 

 training into this especial business of life. How this problem 

 will be solved I have no doubt. And feeling as I do the great 

 obligations we are under to the scientific mind of our day, I 

 shall leave the path which you have trod so well in your dis- 

 cussions, and ask you to consider the mighty efforts which man 

 has made to solve the mysteries of nature for his elevation and 

 practical benefit, and to render it possible to establish this very 

 ^tate Board of Agriculture, which three centuries ago would 

 have been an impossibility. 



For the practical farmer, we have discussed the various 

 modes of cultivation, the management of animals on our farms, 

 the application of chemistry to the improvement of the soil, 

 and the various methods by which the prosperity of the calling 

 can be secured. The subjects of theoretical and practical agri- 



