36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



year. And that course of lectures, gentlemen of the Board of 

 Agriculture, if I remain connected with the institution, I wish 

 you to take under your patronage, and suggest from year to 

 year the lectures that shall be delivered ; and if you can select 

 from your own Board members who can deliver a large portion 

 of these lectures, I shall be very glad of it. We shall thus bring 

 every year before the young men of that college the very best 

 scientific talent we can possibly find, and the very best practical 

 agriculturists that can be found in Massachusetts ; and the 

 oftener they come, the more they lecture, the better I shall like 

 it. 



Professor Agassiz. I should be glad to make a few remarks 

 upon this subject, Professor Chadbourne has touched upon some 

 of the most vital points in connection with the establishment of 

 the Agricultural College which can be brought to your notice. 

 He has touched upon the condition of our schools generally, and 

 upon the condition of our colleges ; and you cannot make an 

 Agricultural College prosperous, — and in Massachusetts no more 

 than elsewhere, — without taking into consideration, in connec- 

 tion with it, the condition of other schools. I was delighted to 

 hear from the president of that institution those liberal and far- 

 sighted views which, under his guidance, will become the life of 

 the institution ; but however well-devised the plan of instruction 

 may be, however comprehensive you may make such an institu- 

 tion, you cannot begin with the a, b, c. The pupils must come 

 with some preparation. Therefore, you have to found on your 

 common schools to start with ; and then you will carry on your 

 education so complete and so perfect and so advanced in the 

 application of science, that the best scholars of the University, 

 after they have completed their collegiate course, will want to go 

 to that college, too. So you cannot organize your Agricultural 

 College, without taking into consideration, not only the element- 

 ary schools, not only the high schools, but the colleges, also. An 

 Agricultural College, in its perfect organization, must occupy a 

 place, a sound, healthy and active place, in the general system of 

 education in Massachusetts, which shall cover all that Massa- 

 chusetts men want ; and therefore, upon that connection, I 

 should like to say a faw words. 



We at Cambridge, in our college, are as perplexed to reorgan- 

 ize the University as you are to organize an Agricultural College 



