24 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



purpose of sustaining and elevating the Board, and also of giving 

 aid and encouragement to the college. 



It should also be the duty and privilege of the Board to 

 examine the students in the college, either by sub-committees or 

 as a body, at the close of each term of the course, or at such 

 times as the faculty might designate. Examinations of this 

 description arc common in other colleges ; and nothing could be 

 more appropriate than the plan I have proposed, -when we con- 

 sider the wide-spread interest in and knowledge of the college, 

 which it would naturally create. It forms a part of that system 

 of co-operation and support which I think is due from the agri- 

 cultural community to an institution founded for their especial 

 benefit. To encourage and strengthen the hands of the presi- 

 dent and faculty, in their endeavors to establish a system of 

 agricultural education, is a service to which the Board of Agri- 

 culture may well devote itself — a service which it can perform 

 without interfering in any way with that part of the government 

 of the college which belongs to the trustees ; a service, which, 

 if properly discharged, may stamp the college as an institution 

 devoted to teaching the science and art of agriculture, and may 

 develop a successful and useful mode of instructing our farmers, 

 and of giving greater certainty to their business. 



Having considered the advantages which the Board may 

 derive from the proposed connection with the college, I now 

 come to the benefits which would accrue to the college itself 

 from such a connection. 



I stated, in the commencement of my remarks, that agricul- 

 tural education is yet in its infancy. And it is so. But while 

 the application of science to the art of tilling the earth has 

 attracted the attention of the best educators of the age, it has 

 been determined, as a general rule, that devotion to matters of 

 practical importance lies at the foundation of the best system of 

 instruction in this branch of education. In the school founded 

 by Fellcnberg, at Hofwyl, in Switzerland, were combined : 1, a 

 pattern farm; 2, an experimental farm; 3, a manufactory of 

 agricultural implements ; 4, a school of industry for the poor ; 

 5, a boarding school ; 6, an institute of agriculture, theoretical 

 and practical. And so successful was this institution, that at 

 one time its pupils were " employed at high salaries, in various 

 parts of Europe, to superintend and direct the labors of agri- 



