204 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, 



After which resolutions were passed, thanking all who took part or attended 

 the Institute, which closed with much enthusiasm. 



GEEENVILLE INSTITUTE. 



This Institute was held January 26 and 27, in Moore's Hall. Although the 

 'weather was unfavorable, a good audience was assembled at the hour of 

 opening. 



Dr. John Avery presided and delivered the following opening address : 



Ladies and Gentlemen: When I was asked to preside at this Institute, I 

 promised to not make a speech or deliver an address, and I intend to keep my 

 word. But I should do injustice to my own feelings and to the occasion, if I 

 did not extend to you all a hearty welcome to Greenville, to this hall, and to 

 all the privileges and benefits of this institute. 



In its conception and organization, this institute, like others of its kind, 

 aims to interest and instruct you, the representatives of agriculture. in this 

 vicinity. And I welcome you with added pleasure, because I see in them the 

 dawn of a better era for farmers and farmers' wives. I see in them the 

 emancipation of the farmer from the continued drudgery of the past, and his 

 elevation into that broader, higher, and purer life to which applied science is 

 steadily lifting the profession of agriculture. 



Other professions hold their institutes and profit by them ; why not the 

 farmer? Teachers, physicians, lawyers, ministers, and even undertakers, meet 

 together, organize societies, exchange views, and discuss topics of interest to 

 themselves and to their patrons. The farmer alone has been content to move 

 along by himself, learning nothing from a regular interchange of ideas with 

 his neighbors, and but little from experience, for experience teaches only those 

 who record her lessons and compare them one with another, and with what 

 others have gathered from her. His yearly show of overgrown pumpkins and , 

 •squashes, at the time of the annual pool-selling and jockey races, has hitherto 

 been his only associated attempt at improvement. 



Ideas like electrical sparks are evolved by friction. We need to come in 

 •contact with each other in order to be sharpened and polished. We can each 

 learn something from the other. Franklin got his first ideas of electricity 

 from an ignorant Scotchman. The wisest may always learn something even 

 /from the less informed. 



The physician who is content to plod along through life without association 

 with his neighboring physicians, reading nothing but the books he read while 

 studying his profession, trusting to experience to carry him through tight 

 places, will ere long find himself traveling in a circle and unable to extricate 

 ■himself from the ruts into which he dropped when he commenced practice. 

 But if he meets his fellow practitioners in consultation, in society meetings, 

 in medical institutes, compares the lessons of his experience with those of 

 ■others, he gathers up a little from each, profits by the knowledge of all with 

 whom he comes in contact, and what is of more importance, learns how to 

 ^profit by his own experience. If in addition to these means of improvement, 

 ^he takes at least one good journal devoted to the interests of his profession, he 



