Educationat. Topics. 493 



ciples embraced in farm work, and the various farm ma- 

 chines now so generally in use. Tliis, in my view, consti- 

 tutes an educated farmer. He may, and doubtless will have 

 a much wider knowledge than this on many points, since 

 agriculture touches on its various sides the confines of almost 

 every science and every art, and the mind, once fired with 

 the love of knowledge, will not limit itself entirely to any 

 specialty. In my opinion, the training best adapted to form 

 the mind of the young farmer, opens the door not only to 

 learning in his single branch, but puts him on a road that, 

 if followed, will develop the man with a broader and fuller 

 culture than any mere classical or high scientific education, 

 uncombined with applied knowledge, can possibly give. 



The fact that so many of our successful educated farmers 

 belong to two professional classes, physicians and civil engi- 

 neers, is a curious one and one that has to my mind the 

 power of explaining why the education of our higl^.er schools 

 and colleges unfits men for the farm. 



The truth is that it unfits them, or, at any rate, does not 

 fit them for those two very departments of life from which 

 our educated farmers come. Our greatest physicians, and 

 our greatest engineers are not college bred men. And in 

 the medical classes tlie foremost, so far as a pretty extensive 

 experience connected with a medical college allows me to 

 judge, are not the classically educated men who come from 

 the literary colleges. 



Medicine is distinguished from the other professions (engi- 

 neering excepted,) by being not only a science, but a practi- 

 cal art. Physicians have to be skilled manual operators ; 

 their science is an applied science, and in it their hands are 



