8 INTRODUCTION. 



State or National Governments will seriously consider their 

 establishment. Shall we await the results of private enterprise 

 or beneficence in the creation of agricultural institutions, with 

 their model farms and costly apparatus of instruction, and their 

 corps of professors, exclusively devoted to the business of in 

 struction ? For these also we should have long to wait, not so 

 much because of the want of liberality among those who have 

 the means to endow such institutions, as for the lack of a clear 

 conviction as yet of their utility, and the really practical charac 

 ter of the information they would supply. 



" It has seemed to us that this problem of a more perfect dif 

 fusion of knowledge on agricultural subjects, is capable of 

 another solution than that which consists in devising means for 

 obtaining governmental appropriations, or awaiting the munifi 

 cence of individuals. m 



" In the attempts which have hitherto been made in this direc 

 tion, too exclusive reliance has been imposed, as it seems to us, 

 on purely professional instruction ; and it has been wrongly as 

 sumed that it is necessary to await the gradual production of 

 a class of men qualified to impart it. No necessity exists, as 

 we believe, to await the creation or production of anything 

 that does not now exist, for the accomplishment of this great 

 work. The material is at hand. We have undiffused knowl 

 edge among us in every department of agriculture and horti 

 culture, and of science applied to cultivation, as minute and 

 profound as exists anywhere on the face of the earth. 



" In accordance with this view, the solution which we pro 

 pose is the enlistment of practical men, who are not professional 

 teachers, in the work of instruction, and their combination 

 in such numbers, that a small contribution of time and labor 

 from each shall make a sufficient aggregate to meet the object 

 in view. The special necessity for such a system, in the case 

 of the pursuit we are considering, grows out of the fact that 

 there is much in agriculture which has not, as yet, taken the 

 form of Science, and can only be acquired from practical men. 



