30 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



As I said at the outset, this is a subject on which I did not 

 think of saying one word, and I hope some other gentleman will 

 occupy the time. 



Prof. P. A. Chadbourne, of Williamstown. I have been 

 requested to make some remarks at an early period of this dis- 

 cussion, and I do so with the understanding that I shall be very 

 likely to make more before the discussion closes. 



I need not say to you that I was very much interested in the 

 address which we had this morning. I think it contained very 

 many things of great importance to us as a Board, having a bear- 

 ing upon agricultural education. I was glad to hear the lec- 

 turer say that agricultural education is in its infancy. If that is 

 so, some mistakes can be pardoned. Everybody who brings up 

 children knows that he has to pardon something to young chil- 

 dren ; .they will make mistakes ; and we must expect to make 

 some mistakes in agriculture, if it is in its infancy, and I believe 

 it is. 



The first point which I wish to make here to-day is one that 

 perhaps will not meet with the assent of all present ; and that is, 

 that America is the most difficult place in the world, at the 

 present time, to bring agricultural education to a high point. I 

 know the arguments that will be urged against this. It will be 

 said that the general intelligence of the people makes it possible 

 to bring agricultural education here to the highest point. Now, 

 I shall bring forward some arguments on the opposite side. I 

 am speaking of America, mind you, not Massachusetts. By-and : 

 by I shall make an exception in favor of Massachusetts, and 

 perhaps of New England. I say that America is the most diffi- 

 cult place in the world to raise agricultural education to a high 

 point, for the reason that every man can obtain just as much 

 land as he wishes to cultivate, and just as much of the very 

 best land in the world as he wishes to cultivate. And so it has 

 come to pass, that, taking our country as a whole, what people 

 have done is to take out of the soil, in successive years, all they 

 could get, and then move to another place, and take up new and 

 virgin soil. Every one who has travelled through the South and 

 seen the cotton and tobacco lands, knows that this is true in 

 regard to that section of the country. They have taken up one 

 plantation and exhausted it, and then removed to another. And 

 what arc our Western people doing ? They arc taking crop after 



