288 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



done during the winter months when we have the experiences and obser- 

 vations of the past seasons to draw conclusions from. The methods by 

 which we may cultivate our brains are numerous and I think is one of the 

 most important topics that can be presented to the farmers today, and I 

 wish that 30U had a lecturer who could jjresent the matter to you right, 

 one who had preparation and knew what he should say and how to say it. 

 I will only say that the man who does not cultivate his brains although 

 he may have ten pounds of them cannot keep up with the times and that 

 is the principal object in horticulture. I say the principal, but not the 

 sole object, but it is a subject that requires a trained mind, requires study 

 to handle. 



Mr. Garfield has told you of the value of institutes. He has told you 

 in a very concise way what this one should be, but no man can stand here 

 and tell you in a straight hour what you should do in that line. It is 

 the commencement only that he has told. I cannot tell you what you 

 should do, but it is about the only schooling we older people can get. 

 We come together and compare our results. If we are true to our busi- 

 ness, we will report our failures. We cannot cultivate our brains with- 

 out reporting and discussing our failures as well as our successes. A 

 trained mind is always safer than one untrained, and no mind can be 

 trained until it knows the probabilities or possibilities of success in any 

 line. 



Caution is one of the best things we can train our minds on. We do not 

 want to become over cautious, as the man who is over cautious seldom 

 "gets there," but the man who is reckless "gets there" too soon. Some 

 men are quite well balanced, but never quite so well as though they had 

 the benefit of a careful training. 



At these institutes we come together and wish to speak only of the 

 things that we all meet; we come together and study one another's 

 methods; we learn from one another what each one knows. Oftentimes 

 a little idea crops out in discussion which is valuable to somebody, to me 

 or to you ; we wonder that we had not thought of it sooner. Simple things 

 mean a great deal sometimes, and they will follow up with ideas that we 

 can apply in our business. 



Last month I was at Kochester, N. Y., at the meeting of the Western 

 New York Horticultural Society, and noticed that Prof. Roberts, of Cor- 

 nell University, came there with sixty of his students who were taking 

 what is known as the short course. Men who have left their business 

 and their farms to go there and cultivate their brains, probably to get 

 training in some special line, but open to every opportunity to gain 

 knowledge. So they came in a body and sat with this society of trained 

 skillful men and gathered all the ideas possible from the discussions, and 

 I assure you it is one of the best places in this country to get reliable 

 information in horticulture. I presume Prof. Roberts gained some new 

 ideas while there, as he is a close student himself. 



We sometimes find men who think they have learned all there is to 

 know about certain things. Such men are really to be pitied. When a 

 man gets to that stage it means simply that his development in that line 

 has ceased, "nothing else." Men who have capacity understand as they 

 become old that the ideas that they once thought they had fixed to a cer- 

 tainty have since become great uncertainties to them. They have cer- 



