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that to till the soil was a mere operation of brute force that required no- 

 other directiou than that which beloaged to the physical force of the 

 body. It did not enter into the computation of the necessities of a 

 farmer's knowledge that the earth was a set of mouths and lungs which 

 breathe, and feed, and live, with ])owers of attraction and repulsion, 

 affected by heat, cold, and moisture ; that seeds germinate, root, and 

 grow, and that their growth is a thiug of life susceptible of improvement 

 and degeneracy, and that their names, genus, and character are as well 

 defined and classified in the vegetable kingdom as are men and animals 

 who live, breathe, and feed in but another sphere of creation. But now 

 it has attracted the attention of the philosopher and the statesman, the 

 mechanic and the laborer, that inasmuch as to till the soil is the occu- 

 pation of about one-half of the whole population of the world, the mind 

 that gives a right direction to this immense work must be an educated 

 mind, and that such education should point to the attainment of the kind 

 of knowledge which is best adapted and most profitable for the attain- 

 ment of success in the end to be realized. 



The appreciation of these views is strongly marked by the action of 

 our National Congress in the passage of the act of 1862, which provides 

 the means for the establishment of an agricultural college in every State 

 of the Union. This liberal provision manifestly recognizes the neces- 

 sity and points to the education of the farmer. Experience has demon- 

 strated that the purely literary institutions of the country are not well 

 adapted to the farmer's wants ; that their teaching was the education of 

 youth to a state of certain unfitness for the pursuit of an agricultural 

 life, and imbued him with a store of that kind of knowledge which was 

 ill adapted to his jiractical occupation. In a. very few years of this col- 

 lege training the youthful life of- the farmer's son was turned into a path 

 of habit and thought which became very uncongenial to the domestic 

 employments of the farm ; and returning home a graduate in science, 

 after an absence of four years, he finds the farm no place for him. He 

 looks around in vain to find some congenial spirit who can appreciate 

 the knowledge that he has gained, some object upon which he cau spend 

 a hai)py thought and hour. His family and friends within the narrow 

 l)recincts of a farm have ceased to be companionable for him. A con- 

 tempt for the dull ploddings of a country life causes him to gaze around 

 that he may discover some plhce of escape from that which is so devoid 

 of interest to him. He is thus driven to the nearest country town, where 

 he may meet spirits more congenial and employment, to him, less irk- 

 some; where he may learn to be a merchant's clerk, an indifferent doctor, 

 a dull lawyer, or inefticieut x^reacher, and, perchance, be thrown into the 

 temptations of vice and intemperance, and thus the effort of a fond 

 l>arent to educate his son results not only in the loss of the hardly- 

 earned means of his education, but the son himself. 



Not so the boy whose course of education has never turned his mind 

 from the first impressions which the farm has made upon the earlier 

 days of his life. At an agricultural college he is taught sufficiently in 

 exact science to enable him to hold a respectable position in all the prac- 

 tical walks of life ; to know the composition of the earth itself, and of the 

 plants that grow upon it ; how they live and move and have their being, 

 and with his own hands habitually dealing with nature, and molding 

 God's creation into forms of higher production, as well as loveliness. 

 This, while it breathes into the body the breath of health, is the delight- 

 ful work of the world, of which the mind never tires, only because the 

 sources of inquiry and mystery of result are entirely inexhaustible. 



The boy whose mind lias been thus cultivated to- a scientific knowl- 



