THE FIUST NATIONAL AGKICULTURAL CONGRESS. 219 



Mr. R. S. Elliott, of Kansas, read the report of the Com 

 mittee on Forest Culture. 



To carry out the views embodied in the report the com 

 mittee submitted the following resolutions: 



1. That we recommend farmers throughout the United 

 States to plant their hilly or otherwise waste lands, and at 

 least ten per cent, of their farms, with trees, in such manner 

 as to provide shelter belts or clumps of rapid growing and 

 useful timber. 



2. That we solicit the Legislatures of the several States to 

 pass laws providing bounties for planting trees, encouraging 

 the planting of the highways, and for the provision of State 

 nurseries of young timber trees, and also the appointment of 

 an &quot; arbor day&quot; for the annual planting of trees, as has al 

 ready been done in the State of Nebraska. 



3. That we ask the Congress of the United States to 

 require, so far as practicable, that railroad companies and 

 settlers hereafter receiving the benefit of the homestead and 

 other acts donating lands, shall plant with timber trees one- 

 tenth of the land so donated. 



The importance of this subject was thoroughly discussed, 

 and the resolutions were adopted. 



Professer Turner, of Jacksonville, 111., read an able and 

 characteristic essay on the education of farmers. The sub 

 ject was treated eloquently, and the essay was marked by 

 the originality and profound thought for which the professor 

 is noted. The lecturer showed that common school education 

 throughout the United States, as it was now administered, 

 was exerting its whole force to drive men away from the 

 farm and from industrial pursuits ; that farmers and indus 

 trial men were the only class of men in the United States 

 that could rectify the matter. Teachers can not do it. In 

 the elucidation of his subject, he pointed out what, he con 

 ceived to be radical errors in our common school system, 

 and showed how the common school discipline was calculated 



