220 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, 



] may possess. These I will cheerfully contribute, in the hope that 

 they may conduce to the advantage of your College, our Institute, and 

 the agricultural interests of our common country. 



I sincerely regret that I have not been able, at any period, to obtain 

 an expression of my own views in a connected form from any other 

 pen, or even any distinct and connected view of the subject. All that 

 has fallen under my notice has been of a desultory character, without 

 any directly practical bearing, and generally only a view from some par- 

 ticular direction. 



Prof. Fanning of the Franklin College of Tennessee about three or 

 four years since introduced the practice of agriculture as a part of edu- 

 cation, at Elm Crag school, which was afterwards incorporated by the 

 Tennessee legislature as Franklin College. In this college there is still 

 attention paid to the practice of agriculture, upon a farm connected with 

 the institution. So far as I can gather from the "Agriculturist," a paper 

 edited by the officers of the college, the chief design of this department 

 is the physical training of students, without reference to their ulterior 

 pursuits in life. The College is, I believe, connected with the Metho- 

 dist denomination : and the connection of artistical employment with 

 classical and other studies has there some features indicating its parent- 

 age in the union of secular calling with the ministerial office. The 

 grand and direct design of the agricultural department is not to train 

 and educate farmers for their business as citizens and farmers. 



In Holland and upon the continent of Europe, particularly in Ger- 

 many and Prussia, there has been an agricultural department attached to 

 their Universities. 1 must confess my knowledge of its duties and ob- 

 jects as imperfect, and destitute of that precision which is satisfactory. 

 From what little information I possess, 1 liave formed the opinion, that 

 the department was charged with the investigation and exposition of 

 the mere theory of agriculture as a portion of the great system of know- 

 ledge. The recent developements of chemical science have given those 

 occupying the agricultural chair a more direct bearing upon practical ag- 

 riculture than they before exercised. 



The Institution at Hoflenwhyle classed that of agriculture among 

 other industrial occupations. Fellenberg embraced in his scheme the 

 wide field, and prepared his pupils for various pursuits according to 

 their selections. Among these the farmer occupied a prominent place. 

 The student studied here the theory and acquired the manipulation ; 

 I have no evidence that he obtained a knowledge of the domestic econ- 

 omy of the farm, — that whicli makes it profitable. He may have learn- 

 ed to plough and sow and gather his wheat, and all the sciences con- 



