FARMERS NEED A HIGHER EDUCATION. 47 



FARMERS NEED A HIGHER EDUCATION. 



From an Address before the Hampden Agricultural Society. 



BY HENRY K. OLIVER. 



History ignores generally the arts of peace, and makes little 

 mention of the wealth-producing industries of a nation. 

 Specially true is this of the memorials of agriculture ; and 

 what I propose to say to you to-day, of the agricultural life 

 and methods of early England, for the purpose of contrast- 

 ing them with those of recent times, in both Old and New 

 England, has been obtained by much search and not a little 

 patient assiduity. 



After the conquest of Britain by the Romans, and the set- 

 tlement therein of Roman colonists, agriculture received 

 greater attention, and her cereal crops were so largely 

 increased that they were made articles of export, and she 

 became to the northern possessions of Rome, what Sicily was 

 to the southern, and what the Western States are to us, the 

 great producers and reservoirs of grain. 



Overleaping now, some five centuries, lighting down upon 

 the Anglo-Saxon period, we find that the incursions of the 

 Northern barbarians had seriously retarded the progress of 

 agriculture, as war always does, robbing the farmers of the 

 products of their lands, and blunting every stimulus to agri- 

 cultural industry. Both their stock-breeding and their til- 

 lage were without any influence of scientific principles, each 

 generation doing as its predecessors did, and following tradi- 

 tionary methods. Their cottages or huts, hardly better than 

 a Welsh pigsty, which they resembled in form, were made 

 of wattles plastered over with clay, without chimneys or 

 windows. Neither bed nor bedstead invited the wearied 

 laborer to repose. Ignorant were they, superstitious to the 



