48 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



specimens which he is unable to set up, because he cannot find 

 those capable of doing the work. The moment he gets them 

 properly educated for that labor they are taken away as profes- 

 sors in other institutions — even before he is willing to admit 

 that they are qualified to fill those places. He is borne down 

 with cares, and may go to the grave leaving these specimens 

 unarranged. Xo one man can do all that work. When these 

 young men are educated I hope they will not go back to their 

 farms ; I hope they will go and help him. Vermont is raising 

 sheep and selling them to the West for $6,000 apiece. The 

 Vermont farmer says if the West will pay us that we can afford 

 to raise them ; and if the West will take our young men we do 

 not want them to go back to the farm. But when a man begins 

 to bend towards the earth the mind also turns to the soil, and 

 then the knowledge he has obtained in youth will be of service 

 to him. He knows how to work ; he knows all the details of 

 the farm. I would never send my boy to an Agricultural Col- 

 lege to learn the details of farming. The more labor you put 

 into a college, the less brains you put in there. You cannot 

 make brains and hands work with the same body, successfully, 

 continually. You do sometimes find men who can do an 

 immense amount of hard work and an immense amount of 

 thinking ; but they are " like angels' visits, few and far 

 between." A great many of these hard-working and hard- 

 thinking men, when they get to be fifty or sixty years old, and 

 have accumulated a small competence, have one acho in the 

 shoulder, and another in the back, and go prematurely to the 

 grave from overwork. Our substantial farmers work too hard, 

 and our boys do not work enough ; but if we want to keep them 

 on the farm wo must keep them ignorant of all other branches 

 of knowledge. 



I had written out some ideas in regard to the Agricultural 

 College, but I think I will not read them. It is said, " ' Let the 

 dead bury their dead ; ' we have an Agricultural College located 

 at Amherst, and it is bound to be established there." Well, I 

 do not know what to say. If I should say I am satisfied it will 

 be a failure — that it can never bo a success there — then it would 

 be said that certain individuals were doing all they could to 

 break down that college. I do not believe the college can be a 

 success there. I do not believe that all the enthusiasm which 



