56 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



are employed in -difFerent departments of productive industry. 

 Some persons read the term " agricultural" in the title, and 

 inquire if all the graduates are farmers. If the question is 

 an honest one, it is an evidence of pitiable ignorance. If 

 the question is put with a sneer at the farmers, whose sound 

 judgment has largely guided the public affairs of this Com- 

 monwealth, and whose steady toil has in large degree 

 ministered to its material prosperity, then the question is 

 unworthy of a citizen or of a man. If the question is a 

 sneer at the college because it does not propose an extended 

 course in the ancient classics, then the question is an evi- 

 dence of a miserable narrowness. Is a young man Avho 

 cannot, or who, for sufficient reasons, will not, pursue the 

 study of the dead languages to be deprived of a college 

 course of study ? That man is narrow-minded who regards 

 the course of instruction proposed by a classic college as the 

 only course admissible for a college, or who, having received 

 an education by means of such a course, thinks there is no 

 other way to intellectual respectability than the path he has 

 travelled. I would not disparage the ancient classics. I 

 have toiled too hard to gain the little I know of them, and 

 prize that little too highly, to speak disparagingly of them. 

 But to say that all liberal instruction must be run in one 

 groove is not wise. Our varied industries at the present 

 time require to direct them men of large culture ; and while 

 Latin and Greek are needed by theologians, and Latin 

 certainly by lawyers, are these languages equally valuable 

 to the superintendent of a factory, the manager of a rail- 

 road, the head man on a farm, or to him who toils in some 

 department of the applied sciences? If it is claimed that 

 the discipline from the study of these languages cannot be 

 gained in any other way, I affirm the claim is yet unproved. 

 We have not yet tested in our courses of study the dis- 

 ciplinary value of the study of the modern languages. We 

 cannot be said to have fully tested in our colleges the dis- 

 ciplinary value of the thorough study of the English lan- 

 guage. 



But let us notice more closely the course at the State Col- 

 lege in its several departments. And first let us notice the 

 provision for the physical training of the students. Every 



