MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 525 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT FRALICK. 



Gentlemen of the Executive Committee of the Michigan State Agricultural Society: 



For this second mark of your confidence in my re-election as your President for 

 another year, permit me to thank you. The best efforts of my head and heart are 

 enlisted in the permanent success of this society, and to that end am ready with you 

 to review the past and plan, revise and arrange, according to the best of our ability, 

 for the future. 



These meetings to me have become occasions of great pleasure, and I feel confident 

 to most, if not all of you, as well as useful and profitable, if not indispensable, to the 

 continued success of this society. Whether as a society or individual's progress, it is 

 wise occasionally to review the past, to pause, well consider, and generalize our facts 

 and position, to note well the stand-point at which we have arrived, aud from the 

 store-house of past experience, draw just conclusions for action for the future. 



Agriculture and its kindred arts are the real foundation of all human progress ; 

 without they prosper, neither national nor individual advancement can be made, or 

 even the present status maintained. 



Of the causes that in all countries and ages have given prominence to agriculture 

 over all other pursuits, I need not remind this committee or society. It feeds, it 

 clothes us; it supplies our daily wants; it is the foundation of the pursuits, usages, 

 and benefits of civilization. Even among the most barbarous tribes, a mode of agri- 

 culture is practiced, and in proportion as man depends less upon the spontaneous 

 products of the earth, and earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, just that measure 

 is his nature exalted, and he becomes distinguished for intelligence, for social and 

 material strength and progress, for commercial enterprise, for manufactures and 

 arts, for respect to laws and religion. Tiie primal curse is thus made a universal 

 blessing. 



Not only is agriculture the earliest of all arts, but we have abundant evidence that 

 many ancient people were skillful husbandmen. The flocks and herds, the stores of 

 fruit and grain, constituted the wealth and pride of eastern nations long before the 

 polished eras of the Greeks and the Romans, and some of the most illustrious men 

 among all nations have been tillers of the soil with their own hands. 



But this art has been not only the precursor, but the sharer in the improvements 

 of the age, and while other arts have been lost, there is no reason to suppose that 

 agriculture has ever, for any length of time, retrograded, though its progress has 

 often been slow, and in some respects it is even yet not materially in advance of the 

 most enlightened nations of antiquity. 



Many of the rules laid down by the best Roman and Greek writers for the proper 

 cultivation of the soil, and the management of flocks and herds, are as judicious aud 

 founded on as practical a conception of the fundamental laws of nature as modern 

 times afford. 



But that which distinguishes modern above ancient agriculture, arises from the 

 advance made in the science of chemistry, geology, meteorology and mathematics, 

 all of which have an intimate relation with the operations of agriculture, and where 

 these are best understood and applied, agriculture is in its most flourishing state. 

 In Europe, science has to be purchased at a high price, which but few comparatively 

 can command, but to the great honor and advantage of Michigan, its school system, 

 from the Primaries up to the University, is free to all, so that the poorest may reap 

 tis well as the rich, and we claim is not excelled in their proficiency in any of the 

 States, and equally by few: and I feel confident that in the means of education for 

 the promotion antl improvement of agriculture and its kindred arts, from the Agri- 

 cultural College, the State Agricultural and Horticultural Societies, and the various 

 district and county societies, farmers' institutes, stock feeders' associations. State 

 and local granges, our State will take rank with the best. 



Let us then bestow upon the youtii of our State the inestimable advantage of a 

 thorough course of agricultural education. Let us teach them to view the occupa- 

 tion of their fathers not as a mere wearying, bodily labor, but as enlivened by the 

 light of science, and worthy of the highest exertions of the most intellectual minds. 

 In recommending the pursuit of agriculture to a wealth-seeking community like ours, 

 the inquiry will at once be suggested, whether the profits of farming are sufficient to 

 justify men of highly educated minds in adopting it as the business of their lives. 

 I allude to the pecuniary profits alone, for it would be easy to show how many 

 ulterior considerations, such as health and the better enjoyment of it, and the free- 

 dom from mental disquietude, constitute inducements of the strongest character. 

 One thing is here especially to be noticed, that though the profits of farming, upon 



