Agricultural Education. 441 



fritit of education — gave him a weight and influence with others which 

 is certainly one of the most vahiable educational results that can be 

 named, and one from the want of which farmers have suffered perhaps 

 more than any other class. 



The Educational Peocess. 



2. Agricultural Education. — We come now, in the second part of this 

 paper, to consider the educational process by which the agriculturist 

 is to be qualified for his profession. How can those faculties be best 

 educated, that knowledge best conferred, that skill best acquired, 

 which the farmer needs V This is the question for consideration. It 

 must, hovv-ever, be confessed that notwithstanding the attempt just 

 made to define in a systematic manner the equipment which the farmer 

 needs, no sooner do we begin to consider the way in which it is 

 to be obtained than speculation fails us, and we are fain to fall back 

 on actual experience as offering the only safe guidance to the answer 

 which is sought. — Of course the boy must go to school, v/hatever may 

 be his future occupation ; and, no doubt, the discipline, both of school 

 life and of school work — the habits, on the one hand, of obedience and 

 regularity, and on the other of j)erseverance and resolution which thus 

 arise — together with the actual knowledge and ability acquired — 

 remain v/ith him through life to his great advantage, whether he is to 

 be a farmer or not. I do not pretend to discuss the relative merits in 

 these respects of the various plans of scholastic training which have 

 been advocated. Their bearing on a future good manhood is, of 

 course, a far higher subject than the one which occupies us now. I 

 presume, however, that in this room we have to do not with good 

 manhood, but with the much himibler subject of good agriculture ; and 

 the elementary schooling of the boy can have but little direct or 

 special relationship to the ultimate profession of the farmer. But, even 

 if this were otherwise, I should not suppose schools, designed especially 

 for farmers' sons, or for those of their sons who are to be farmers, to 

 be at all desirable. There surely is some advantage in boys of town 

 and country origin commingling in school life. Eather than have the 

 sons of farmers educated as a class, it would be better they should go 

 where the peculiarities and self-conceit of home life may be rubbed 

 off, and some knowledge be acquired, from the beginning, that good 

 sense and agi-eeable companionship exist in other professions as well 

 as agriculture. 



Neither ought we to forget that agriculturists are a very various 

 body, socially. The so-called class of tenant-farmers does, indeed, 

 include differences almost as gi-eat in their way in regard to social 

 position as the so-called " class " of landowners, which includes in 

 its lower ranks 40s. freeholders. The school education, therefore, of 

 the boy who is to be a farmer, which, of course, ought always to be as 

 good and liberal as is compatible with the necessities of after life, 

 is necessarily extremely various, according to the wealth and position 

 of his parents, and the consequent social position, wealth, and leisure, 

 which he himself may ultimately command. 



On all these grounds it appears to me that elementary, general, and 



