PRACTICAL TESTS ON THE FARM. 15 



It will be observed that every mode of improving agriculture 

 by process of mental discipline, has had immediate reference to 

 the practical business of the farm. The most poetical and 

 imaginative of agricultural writers have always kept the farm- 

 yard and the furrow in view. The most elaborate scientific 

 investigations into the nature of the soil, the qualities of plants, 

 the structure of animals, — chemistry, botany, physiology, — 

 have all been subjected to that hardest of all tests, the details 

 of agricultural life. However broad may have been the policy, 

 however large the design of those who, by school, and society, 

 and volume, have endeavored to increase the wealth and power 

 of the State, by draining its lands, and dividing its fields, and 

 protecting its forests, and encouraging its productions, and 

 introducing the mechanical improvements of the age, they have 

 all been obliged to take their stand and apply their knowledge 

 and their forces to an individual farm in order to test their 

 value. And when a disciple of Liebig applies successfully the 

 theory of his scientific master to a rood of land, Liebig's triumph 

 is there. When our own industrious and untiring Agassiz finds 

 the laws of reproduction, which he has laid down after long 

 study in the closet, practically applied by the intelligent and 

 enterprising farmer for the improvement of his flocks and herds, 

 then it is that the philosophy of Agassiz plants its foot upon the 

 earth and benefits mankind. The knowledge which science 

 has already unfolded belongs to the farmer, if he will but accept 

 and exercise it. And the best teacher of agriculture is he who 

 can present this knowledge written out upon the fields and 

 gardens, which his own intelligent skill has brought up to use- 

 fulness and beauty. The best agricultural college is that which 

 sends forth from its halls a band of successful cultivators, 

 admiring and believing in nature, because they are familiar with 

 her laws. This may be called an industrial school, perhaps ; and 

 it may be deemed unworthy of the high position which Massa- 

 chusetts should take as a fountain of the highest knowledge. But 

 let such a college once be established here — a college in which 

 the theory of the student will receive the stamp of its actual 

 value — a college in which the experiment of the laboratory will 

 be put to a final test — a college in which all the best culture of 

 the schools will be so moulded and directed as to give us a 

 cultivated population, devoted to' the land, with an under- 



