164 president's address — section g. 



manuring our different classes of soils, with special reference to the 

 crops desired ; we have to find out a great deal about the treatment 

 of fungus diseases in fruit and cereals, and of insect pests in our 

 orchards and vineyards ; we have to find out the varieties of 

 cereals and roots best suited to the different districts, having regard 

 to the different soils, and diseases to which certain districts are 

 specially liable ; we have to test new implements, new machines, 

 new varieties of stock, new crops, new methods, and new ideas. 

 This kind of work can be done only by trained men, who give their 

 whole time and enei-gy to such investigations, for which the Stcite 

 must be expected to provide the means. In France there are 

 twenty-three such stations, and in Germany twenty-seven, where 

 seventy trained chemists, botanists, and experimenters are employed 

 constantly in the service of the farming community. A large 

 amount of the work done by these scientific nr»en has been 

 published to the world, and has been placed as fre^-ly in our hands 

 as in those of the men for whom it was primarily intended. It surely 

 behoves us, as a young nation hoping to make a foremost place 

 amongst the nations of the earth, to be up and doing, bearing our 

 fair share in educating the great agricultural masses. We have 

 received a noble heritage of agricultural experience and scholarship 

 from our own ancestral country, as well as from America, France, 

 Germany, Italy, Holland, and Denmark, and we ought surely in 

 return to be conducting new lines of investigation on our own 

 account, and imparting the results as freely to them as they have 

 done to us in the past. 



I have said nothing about a chair of agriculture in our 

 universit)% which might be considered as a necessary coping-stone 

 to our educational structure, because I feel that our education in 

 agriculture is at present far too backward to need such an advanced 

 stage for a few years to come. I assume that the university course 

 would be one fitted to turn out specialists in all of the sciences 

 allied to agriculture, men who would be our future principals of 

 colleges, professors of agriculture, agricultural chemists, botanists, 

 pathologists, and entomologists. 



There is a very limited demand for such men just now. We are 

 not yet, as a community, educated suflficiently to appreciate the 

 value of these scientific experts. There seems to be only room for 

 the practical farmer, and the city theorist, and clerical agricultiirist 

 who live on the farmer, not on the soil ; but when we have 

 established a number of agricultural schools of a standard equal at 

 least to that of our existing colleges, and have raised our college 

 standard in a corresponding ratio, we shall have room for a number 

 of practical scientists, men who have gone through a long scientific 

 and practical training, first in the field, then in the college class- 

 room and experimental grounds, and finally in the university 

 laboratories, and who will have love for, and faith in, agriculture 

 to devote their lives to its service. 



