54 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



those men, reckoned successful before, to still further efforts to 

 achieve yet higher success. They go to him to see how he does 

 it, and he shows them his methods. There is not a particle of 

 the valuable substances which are to so great an extent lost by 

 other farmers in making manure lost by him ; everything is 

 saved ; everything is applied with the utmost skill and intellect, 

 and the result is astonishing. Yet he is only a young man. I 

 think that instance shows that if, out of the twenty young men 

 you educate in a year, there are two who go back to the farm, 

 one in one place and one in another, you send out every year 

 two apostles ; and this influence will increase, until at last agri- 

 culture will be accepted to be (what we so well know it to be,) 

 an intellectual pursuit. You see the process in the mind's eye, 

 by the relation of cause and effect. Your scientific principles 

 prevail whether you see them or not. When once the talk 

 about the debasement of farming (falsely so called) ceases, it 

 becomes an intellectual pursuit. Gentleman, follow it and you 

 can talk about the processes of agriculture, the improvement of 

 cattle, and all those things, just as we do now about bank stocks 

 and other fashionable subjects. I have entire faith in the 

 success of the Agricultural College. 



Mr. Perkins. I did not mean to intimate that the farmers of 

 Massachusetts were deteriorating intellectually. I claim that 

 the whole of Massachusetts is rising in intellect, and the farmers 

 going up with the rest ; but I did not mean to have it inferred 

 that a well-educated man would be increasing his knowledge 

 particularly by turning to farming again. I think our agricul- 

 tural societies and our farmers' clubs in Berkshire have done 

 wonders for our farmers. Wherever we have an agricultural 

 club I can see it has improved our farmers in everything they 

 have to do with. 



Mr. Dodge. There is one idea that suggests itself to me in 

 regard to this Agricultural College being placed so near to a 

 literary college. It has been argued that this is a disadvantage. 

 If there were any connection between the two, I think it would 

 be ; but this Agricultural College is entirely distinct from 

 Amherst College. Governor Andrew, when this matter was 

 broached, recommended a union of the Agricultural College 

 with Harvard University, stating, what was very plausible 

 indeed, that the Bussey farm, which was left to Harvard College 



