MANUALS RECOMMENDED. 361 



boj T s educated for this pursuit, and brought up to the standard of 

 skill and intelligence that is necessary, in order to enter successfully 

 upon any other industrial career? It is education which gives dignity 

 to the man, be his profession what it may ; and there is no calling 

 which would rank higher than that of the farmer, if those who 

 enter upon it were sufficiently educated to make it successful and 

 profitable. 



This committee proposed as the first step in furnishing agricult 

 ural education: 



1. The engrafting upon our common school education the study 

 of the elementary principles of geology, of agricultural chemistry, 

 of physiology, and of botany. 



They propose that these shall be taught by manuals, in the usual 

 form of question and answer, and that they shall be confined to the 

 plainest leading principles applicable to the cultivation of the soil, 

 and prepared in such a manner that it will not depend altogether 

 upon the knowledge of the instructor to make them of use to the 

 learner. 



It is only necessary to appeal to the individual experience of every 

 one for a just estimate of the importance of this simple and in 

 expensive measure. Our children would, from this slight addition 

 to their studies, learn something which would every day be more 

 and more deeply implanted in their minds by their daily walks in 

 the school-room. They could not see a tree send forth its leaves, its 

 flowers, its fruits; or the fresh sod turned over by the plow; or 

 the rain fall from the heavens; or the sun shine upon the earth, 

 without attaching to these now unheeded operations a meaning and 

 a significance, and without inspiring in their minds a spirit of in 

 vestigation and inquiry, which would be preparing them for the 

 practical pursuits of after-life. 



The vital principle in the plan proposed is to start the education 

 of the future farmer at the earliest possible period ; and to do this, 

 the commencement must be in our public schools, while the other 

 parts of the boy s education are going on. But it must not stop here. 

 It has already been remarked that special schools, academies and 

 colleges, exist for the instruction of youths intended for every other 

 career in life except that of a farn^er. They leave the public schools, 

 where they have been well prepared, to enter upon the special edu 

 cation for the professions for which they are designed, while the 

 boy who is to become a farmer is left to shift for himself. He is 

 dropped upon the farm, as it were, wholly unfitted, wholly unpre 

 pared to reap any advantage from what he has already been taught. 

 His education stops short, just at the moment when a very moderate 

 degree of special instruction would fit him to enter life with every 

 prospect of success. To supply this absolute want the committee 

 proposed the establishment of 



2. An agricultural school, with a farm attached to it, in each 

 county, to be devoted exclusively to agricultural instruction, uniting 

 science with correct practice. 



These county schools need not be expensive undertakings. They 

 should be commenced upon the plan of educating youths in the 

 best methods of farm management, connecting with it such knowl 

 edge of the science and theory of agriculture, as can be obtained 



