180 State Horticultural Society. 



studies. The day is past when men who study art and literature are 

 considered the elite of the cultured set. The time has come when any 

 object, however lowly, can be made a means of education ; when a 

 study of the unfolding of the apple blossom is known to possess as 

 great pedagogic value as the critical examination of a Greek syllogism. 

 The time is coming — perhaps here — when pigs and peaches may be 

 regarded as no less divine than Latin and logic. The opening of this 

 building premises a sound conception on your part of this change in 

 pedagogic point of view. And is it not a happy metamorphosis? 

 Why should not a State with over a quarter of a million farms, and 

 certainly over a million people living on farms, make the fullest en- 

 deavor to teach these people in the terms of their daily lives? And 

 these terms are the soil, the plant, the animal. Will not this new 

 teaching bring greater contentment than the old? Will it not raise 

 up men and women who will advance agriculture in proportion to 

 its importance as a producer of national wealth and a bulwark of 

 national capital? For we know that one-third of the population of 

 the United States work the land, and the other two-thirds live by 

 reason of this fact. The colleges are teaching how to grow crops. 

 In the future the burden of teaching must be shifted from the crops 

 to the man who grows them. Bailey says the voice of the school 

 house will say : 



"I teach 



The earth aud soil 



To them that toil 



The hill and fen 



To common men I 



That live just here. 



"The plants that grow, 

 The winds that blow, 

 The streams that run 

 In rain and sun 

 Throughout the year. 



"And then I lead 

 Thro' wood and mead, 

 Thro' mould and sod, 

 Out unto God. 

 With love and cheer 

 I teach !" 



The pedagogic point of view must be shifted from the crop to 

 the man. 



The horticultural field bristles with problems ; the management of 

 plants ; the treatment and control of plant diseases ; the prevention of 

 insect enemies. Our efiforts in these directions are often painfully 

 feeble, lamentably superficial and ineflfective. 



