494 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
who do not know wheat from barley ; who are too indolent or too proud 
to go upon a farm—and teach them the A, B, C of farming, the usual 
method of spading, hoeing, and plowing, just as they might learn it in 
every field of this broad land. Or that in mechanic arts they should 
take young men, too indolent or too proud to go into the workshop, and 
set them at playing with tools, in the hope of teaching them to wield a 
hammer or to shove a plane.” There is no “royal road” to farming. 
These institutions should take sound, manly, capable young men, where 
the farms, the shops, and the preliminary schools leave them, and give 
them back to the country, strong to develop and increase the resources 
of neighborhoods, States, and nations. The splendid endowments of 
our leading colleges should not be frittered away on preliminary education, 
that is better given by farms, shops, public schools, and academies, but 
should be concentrated for an advanced education, with the best professors, 
buildings, libraries, models, apparatus, machines, and the best farms and 
shops. It isnot enough to have a professor of agricultural chemistry, 
or of the mechanic arts, here and there. They should be brought to- 
gether, with ample educational material of every sort. Resources for 
primary education should be scattered—but concentrated for advanced 
studies. 
Mr. 8. 8S. Whitman, of Little Falls, thinks farmers lose much money in 
raising inferior hogs, and recommends that they keep only thorough- 
bred boars. It is not advisable, however, to raise thorough-breds merely 
for the butcher. Select the best sows of the common stock, large, even 
if a little coarse, and cross them with a pedigree boar of good shape, 
fine bones, and great aptitude to fatten and mature early, such as the 
Suffolk, Berkshire, Essex, or Yorkshire; and if the young pigs are well 
fed, no more useful hog for ordinary purposes can be desired. It is ab- 
solutely essential at all times to use athorough-bred boar, but whether 
of large or of small breed depends on circumstances. For spring pigs, to 
be fattened in the fall, the small breed will be the most profitable; for 
pigs to be kept tilla year or eighteen months old, the Yorkshire, or some 
other large breed, may be better. Crossing with a large sow, even of 
the smallest of the small breeds, (the Prince Albert) will give a hog 
which will dress four hundred pounds, at a year or fourteen months old. 
Dr. 8. J. Parker, of Ithaca, details interesting results in hybridizing 
grapes, by cutting off the anthers of some hardy native grape, and flood- 
ing the pistils with pollen from the Black Hamburg, or some other su- 
perb foreign grape, from which several fine varieties have already been 
raised, combining the peculiarities of both parents. He asserts that 
even the Black Hamburg never dies from cold, but from disease, 
and says that he has had canes of this grape bear freely after exposure 
to 18° below zero, F. He suggests that hybrids may be made by inter- 
twining bearing branches of two sorts, so that the pollen of one will 
fertilize the other; and is confident that ultimately we shall produce 
scores of grapes as luscious as any now grown in Europe, fitted to our 
varied climate, and eaten everywhere in our broad domain. At Ham- 
mondsport, New York, where grape culture has been so successful, the 
vines are trained on a low wire trellis, so that the fruit is only from 10 
to 18 inches from the ground, just high enough to keep it out of the 
splash of rain-mud. 
Mr. Joseph Harding, of England, in a prize essay, states that the Amer- 
ican factory cheese now finds a ready sale, at high prices, among the 
most fastidious consumers in England, and sells at better rates than 
English cheese, which has solong monopolized their markets. He urges 
greater attention to small details, as milk begins to decompose the 
