294 ANNUAL REPORT 



time the efforts to help have resulted in a temporary hindrance, 

 and a set-back to the very object which it was intended to help. 

 When these young men have failed, men have said: ''You see 

 how it is! As soon as a man gets an education, his inclina- 

 tion to labor with his hands, to raise the fruits of the earth, is 

 gone. He will no longer stay in the country with its simple 

 pleasures and rounds of duties; his place is in a store, or he 

 should be a minister, doctor or lawyer; there is no need of book 

 learning to cultivate a market garden, to run a green "house suc- 

 cessfully, or to raise grapes, raspberries or blackberries. All 

 the education he needs is that of the common school and a short 

 period of laboring in the garden, greenhouse or vineyard, and 

 he can raise as good vegetables, flowers, grapes and berries as 

 anyone. It is all nonsense to talk about education for farmers 

 and gardeners; they do not need it, and all the money spent in 

 trying to educate men to fill such positions, is as good as wasted. 

 Such positions are servile and not worthy the entire attention of 

 liberally educated men." 



Much of such a tenor as this has been written and said, and 

 that, too, by men who have honestly believed it. And they be- 

 lieved it because they thought that only was worthy the name 

 of education which was classical in its nature. Such an educa- 

 tion as is to-day given by the best agricultural and horticultural 

 schools, in this county and abroad, was not known. 



I well remember a man speaking to such effect at a meeting of 

 the state board of agriculture in Massachusetts, about ten years 

 ago, and Prof. Stockbridge's reply to him. The old man arose 

 with dignity and said something like the following: "The 

 gentleman who has just spoken is ignorant of the first principles 

 of agriculture. He is behind the times in which he lives and is 

 still enveloped in the fogs and mists that characterized the dark 

 ages. Such language might suit the period of knight errantry, 

 when men thought the only calling worthy of ambition was that 

 of arms, but it is entirely unsuited to the time in which we live." 



But these efforts to educate and make horticulturists have not 

 been barren of results. The strong minds that believed a liberal 

 education was necessary for a full development and were pioneers 

 in the labor of introducing such education, did not labor in vain. 



In the older states, from the agitation of this educational idea, 

 has come much good. It served to stimulate horticultural and 

 agricultural thought, and while the results at once achieved did 

 not equal the expectations of the founders, much dissemination 



