SCIENCES TO BE TAUGHT. 225 



Atlantic, Tull, the author of the improved husbandry ; Young, 

 the eminent agriculturist, who kindled so great a zeal, and dif 

 fused so great a mass of information, among his countrymen ; 

 and Sinclair, as great a benefactor to improved agriculture as 

 England has known, were all men of liberal education and 

 distinguished scientific attainments. Yon Thaer, on the Conti 

 nent, himself a host in agricultural skill and science, was bred to 

 a learned profession. If I were at liberty to violate a rule which 

 I have made absolute, I might refer to many living examples, on 

 both sides of the water, of men of the finest genius, the most 

 accomplished education, and rare scientific attainments, who 

 have rendered, and are daily rendering, the highest benefits to 

 practical agriculture, and which without their aid and enterprise 

 would never be realized. It is, then, with agriculture as with 

 every other valuable art ; its success and improvement must 

 depend mainly upon the education of those who pursue it, and 

 all hope of its progress must rest upon the science, in the most 

 extended sense of that term, which is brought to bear upon it. 



XXVIII. SCIENCES TO BE TAUGHT. 



The Agricultural College at Cirencester proposes a specific- 

 education in agriculture, and the cultivation of those science? 

 which bear directly upon it. Botany, not as a mere catalogue 

 of names and classes of vegetable productions, but as embracing 

 the whole subject of vegetable physiology and the artificial 

 improvement of plants, must of course be highly useful to a 

 farmer. The cultivation of fruit and forest trees is necessarily 

 included in it. The science of mechanics, so useful in the con 

 struction and improvement of agricultural implements, must be 

 of constant and valuable application in the management of 

 a farm. 



