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BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Mr. T. S. Gold. Mr. Chairman, I want to improve this 

 opportunity, as there is no one else here to speak perhaps upon 

 this subject, to say a few words, if you please. I have had a 

 good deal of experience in little efforts in that direction. 

 Probably more than any of those around me. I began our 

 Cream Hill Agricultural School in 1845, and taught for 24 

 years. I had boys in my house and boys all around me ; boys 

 with me, indoors and out. My course with regard to instruc- 

 tion in agfriculture was not so much to teach those boys scien- 

 tific asrriculture as it was to teach them what citv bovs are often 

 very anxious to learn about — common things ; to teach them to 

 use their eyes and their ears ; everywhere they want to use their 

 hands and their feet, and to notice things to some purpose. We 

 had a plot of ground in the garden which each boy was taught 

 to prepare, to plant the seed, and cultivate the plants, and so 

 learn the history and mystery of the germination of seed. The 

 boys thus found that some plants came up just as the minister 

 did, wrong end up ; that they would not stay in the ground ; 

 that they had a habit of their own. Those were curiosities to 

 them, and we found that some boys who did not care about 

 books were very often extremely eager students of nature. 

 When vou get a boy's mind and his eyes open to seeing natural 

 things he sees things more readily in the books. He learns ^ 

 more in books, notwithstanding the time he spends in learning -^ 

 the practical part of nature. The time devoted in the school- 

 room to this agriculture, and to general natural history instruc- 

 tion, was the last half hour in the afternoon. Usually it was 

 one of the most unprofitable and trying half hours in the teach- 

 er's duty in the schoolroom to keep them on their books, keep 

 them in order, and all that sort of thing. 



In agricultural instruction I had a little catechism — John- 

 son's "Agricultural Catechism," which was a little text-book 

 which I used, and aside from its use as a text-book I used it 

 a good deal to draw out, and as something to excite talk upon 

 the subjects it treated of among the boys. We also taught 



