160 STATE BOAE*D OF AGRICULTUEE. 



temptible law the dying request of a man is so diverted from its purpose that 

 the honest heirs are cheated out of their dues, while tlie lawyer takes two-thirds 

 of the spoils and his client takes the other third and pays expenses. Young 

 men of our farming community, will you look upon such things as these and 

 still suffer yourselves to remain uneducated, or will you educate yourselves to 

 cope with the world as you find it ; to be a faithful servant in society, an intel- 

 ligent benefactor to man? Such are your duties in the hereafter; then be not 

 slow to do your duty. 



Book farming and book farmers have been looked upon with suspicion, yet 

 who is so stupid as not to observe that they are gaining ground. All new dis- 

 coveries, systems or inventions are apt to meet with an unfavorable first opin- 

 ion, and it often takes society years to correct an erroneous idea. When the 

 fanning-mill was first brought into use it was called Satan's machine, it being 

 supposed that Satan was prince of the powers of the air, and for a person to use 

 a fanning-mill was deemed contrary to the text, ''The wind bloweth where it 

 listeth," and was a sufficient crime to expel him from the church. Yet in the 

 present day no farmer considers himself the less a Christian for using one of 

 these satanical machines, and we laugh to scorn the ignorant superstition with 

 which our forefathers opposed its use. So a few years hence will people laugh 

 at the errors we now are making, and foremost among those errors will stand 

 the idea that the farmer needs no education beyond that obtained in our com- 

 mon schools. In fact most of us now believe education to be as much for the 

 farmer as for any one else, yet many concur in the old belief. 



In conclusion, I believe the advantages attendant upon the agricultural 

 classes in the United States were never so propitious as at the present time, 

 and that the needs of a thoroughly educated class of farmers were never more 

 manifest ; that the agricultural future of our young men will be in a great 

 measure what their individual efforts make it. 



That, surrounded by advantages such as the Grange, the Farmers' Institutes, 

 our Agricultural College, and the agricultural press, the efforts of our young 

 men in agriculture must hereafter be characterized by intelligence and success ; 

 that tlaough educated young men have as a rule sought some professional calling, 

 in the coming century as intelligent and well educated young men will be found 

 in the agricultural ranks as elsewhere ; that the rising agriculturist will do much 

 to perfect present systems and to introduce new and needed systems of agricul- 

 ture. Then, to you, young men, I would say, be up and doing ; there is work 

 around us all. 



Prof. Beal read a short paper on ''The Farmer's G-arden," as follows : 



THE farmer's garden 



should be one of the most interesting and profitable parts of the farm. In fact 

 it too often consists of a quarter of an acre or more — a little patch near the 

 house, surrounded on all sides by a picket fence, which is often whitewashed. 

 Here may be found a few currant bushes, struggling with grass, weeds, and 

 briars ; a few grape vines, running wild over a tumble down trellis, along the 

 fence, on to the top of the nearest cherry trees, Avhich they injure or very likely 

 succeed in killing. There are often no plants of rhubarb, asparagus, strawber- 

 ries, raspberries, or gooseberries. If these or other perennial plants find a place, 

 they are too often scattered here and there in isolated jiatches over the gar- 

 den. 



Early every spring, once a year atr least with every farmer, at the approach of 



