I 



492 State Boakd of Agriculture, &c. 



manhood for the development of the rich resources of the 

 soil. 



And when I look further and see that in Europe agricul- 

 tural education is a success, equally with any other special 

 training, I am still more anxious to inquire what there is in 

 the climate of North America which prevents knowledge 

 from being brought, through the schools, on the farms of 

 this nation. We are not altogether without educated far- 

 mers, who are strongly interested in and attached to their 

 work, and highly successful in it. It has occurred to me to 

 inquire what there is special in such cases that prevents edu- 

 cation from giving them that distaste for farm life that is said 

 so invariably to accompany scholastic training. I have taken 

 down lists of the names of our successful educated farmers, 

 and have inquired into their antecedents, and the results are 

 certainly curious, and may be instructive. I find in a list of 

 some sixty or seventy successful educated farmers, in New 

 England, New York and Canada, that over one-half of them,, 

 nearly two-thirds, are either doctors of medicine, or civil 

 engineers, while of the remainder a considerable proportion 

 are foreigners. Ot those who are farmers, pure and simple, 

 every one is mainly self educated, and not one of them is a 

 coUeo-e graduate. 



Perhaps I ought to state here what I mean by "educated" 

 in this connection, I mean by it, possessed of a competent 

 knowledo;e of the scientific facts which form the basis of sue- 

 cessful agricultural practice, and a familiarity with ^what is 

 being done all over the world for the improvement of agri- 

 culture in its various branches. I include also a knowledge 

 of mechanics sufficient to comprehend the mechanical prin- 



