SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 179 



this sentiment in our educated young men. The author of that re- 

 mark is Horatio Seymour. It struck me powerfully as sound and just, 

 and, shortly after tlie establishment of the Cornell University, the 

 trustees adopted a rule by which every student in every department — 

 as a condition for graduation — must hear a course of lectures on gen- 

 eral agriculture. 



I am glad to state that, although the rule was received with some 

 grumbling at first, that grumbling stopped immediately after the first 

 lecture. Said a student to me at that time, " These lectures make us 

 all wish to get hoes, and go at scratching up the ground at once." The 

 lecturer for this general purpose is John Stanton Gould. May his in- 

 terruption by ill health, which has deprived us of his service the past 

 year, be but temporary ! Long may he be spared to the University and 

 the State, for whose good he has so steadily and so earnestly labored ! 



But suppose that no young men came forward to take agricultural 

 studies, the new education would still tell powerfully on agriculture. 

 Think you that we can send out year after year — as we did last year — 

 a hundred graduates from all our various departments, whose powers 

 of observation have been trained and whose real knowledge of sub- 

 jects bearing on agriculture has been extended by close study in Bot- 

 any, Animal Physiology, Geology, and Chemistry, without its telling 

 ultimately on the progress of agriculture ? 



But suppose that not one student was even thus educated, I main- 

 tain that the State and nation would receive more than the equivalent 

 of its endowment. 



Look at a few figures. The last census gives certain agricultural 

 statistics whose magnitude is almost oppressive. The value of farm 

 productions in the United States, in the year 1870, was considerably 

 over 12,000,000,000. 



The value of farm productions in the State of New York, the same 

 year, was over $250,000,000. 



Does not common-sense tell us that we can well afford to make a 

 little outlay to promote any sciences which may help such a vast in- 

 terest ? If in the course of years, in all these laboratories and experi- 

 ments, some one useful idea shall be struck out, it would repay our 

 endowments a thousand-fold. 



Says Emerson, "The true poet is an inspired prophet." Did you 

 ever think what an inspiration lies in the poet's declaration that "the 

 greatest benefactor of mankind is he who makes two blades of grass 

 grow where one grew before ? " If not, look at the census returns show- 

 ing the enormous value of the hay-crop of these Northern States. 



Knowledge of Nature — coming by research and observation in the 

 laboratory and the field — these are to give us finally our " two blades 

 of grass," and multitudes of other benefactions to our race not less 

 precious. 



The Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College has not a single stu- 



