8 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



the constitution, is to afford thorough instruction in agriculture and the natural sciences 

 connected therewith : to effect that object most completely the institution shall combine 

 physical with intellectual education, and shall be a high seminary of learning, in which the 

 graduate of the common school can commence, pursue and finish a course of study, termi- 

 nating in thorough theoretic and practical instruction in those sciences and arts which bear 

 directly upon agriculture and kindred industrial pursuits. The course of instruction shall 

 embrace the English language and literature, mathematics, civil engineering, agricultural 

 chemistry, animal and vegetable anatomy and physiology, the veterinary art, entomology, 

 geology, and such other nataral sciences as may be prescribed, technology, political, 

 rural and household economy, horticulture, moral philosophy, history, book-keeping, and 

 especially the application of science and the mechanic arts to practical agriculture in the 

 field. * * A full course of study in the institution shall embrace not less than four years. " 

 The course of study has been made to meet the requirements of the law so far as its lim- 

 ited means allow. At the same time students are received for instruction in such studies as 

 they shall select, so that virtually there are shorter courses. 



SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 



The sciences have a place very properly in professional schools. The student not only 

 desires to know what to do, and how to do it, but also why? The mind prompts to the in- 

 qniry after the reasons, so far as they are known, and to speculation where actual know- 

 ledge is lacking. Out of this curiosity science arises and is furthered. 



The surveyor studies geometry, although he could do ordinary surveying as most persons 

 do, without understanding it ; the navigator usually manages his vessel according to rules, 

 but he would often be more competent to his work if he understood astronomy, trigonom- 

 etry, and physical geography. 



It has sometimes been doubted whether agriculture is yet well enough understood to 

 make a knowledge of the sciences of chemistry and botany and vegetable physiology of any 

 great value to him. We know how to do many things, do we know why? We understand 

 the value of rotation of crops in general culture. Does chemistry throw any light upon the 

 reasons? It must be owned that the causes at work in agricultural operations are mostly, 

 as yet, mysterious in their working, and that agriculture is but barely entitled to the name 

 of a science. To know what to do and how to do we have to look away from the sciences 

 to the practice of those who are successful farmers. We may visit and talk with them upon 

 their lands, we may see their communications to the papers, we may take the treatises in 

 which the rules of the art have been collected and classified, and it is only by these methods 

 that agriculture is to be learned. 



Still the sciences have their uses. It is the desire of thoughtful men to investigate the 

 conditions of growth, and to change the condition of agriculture from that of an empirical 

 art into the nobler one of a science, founded on known principles. They only can aid in 

 this work who have a knowledge of the several sciences out of which agriculture comes. 



Agriculture as a routine practice changes. It is not East what it is West. It calls for 

 modifications according to variations of climate, of implements used, of the demands of the 

 markets. One whose knowledge is purely that of routine might be a model to-day, and in 

 the back ground to-morrow. A knowledge of science will enable the farmer to understand 

 the discussions that are going on. Tne unscientific readers of papers, however generally in- 

 telligent, cannot understand these discussions if they involve any accurate knowledge of the 

 sciences. But with such knowledge he can keep up with the discoveries science is making, 

 and find out their applications to his business. A young man who has made the technical 

 terms and principles of any science familiar to himself has received the best of training in 

 the art of observing, comparing, thinking. His present knowledge consisting of general 

 facts in systematic arrangement, becomes the nucleus about which all he sees, or hears, or 

 reads gathers in orderly array. Modifications in his practice are more easily adopted by him 

 than by his neighbor who does not think. 



But even now, science has taken so fair a hold of agriculture that a knowledge of botany, 

 animal and vegetable physiology, entomology, chemistry, meteorology, and mechanics are 

 of essential service to the thoughtful farmer. The relations of fertilizers to vegetable 

 growth are beginning to be known, and chemical analysis to be profitable, and some 

 light has been thrown on fattening processes, the action of soils upon soluble substances, 

 and a variety of other things. Especially are new facts being elicited which admit of 

 classification and useful application, and even now it will be found that scientific knowledge 

 is one of the most valuable aids to the farmer. Science has always vindicated its practical 

 nature. The astronomy that Socrates thought useless, rules the navigation of the world ; the 

 "swing-swangs" that were ridiculed in Hooker's time gave us the clock, and what seems 

 more remote from our telegraphs than Galvani watching the contractions of the leg of a 

 frog? Nothing is more practical than science. 



