AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES 95 



While they are reading natural history might not a little gardening, 

 planting, grafting, inoculating be taught and practiced, and now and then 

 excursions made to the neighboring plantations of the best farms, their 

 methods observed and reasoned upon for the information of youth, the 

 improvement of agriculture being useful to all and skill in it no disparage- 

 ment to any? (122, p. 361). 



This idea was first put into actual practice in 1792 when 

 agriculture became a subject of instruction in Columbia College. 

 This was brought about chiefly through the agitation of the New 

 York, and other agricultural societies. Another example of the 

 attitude of these early societies toward agricultural education is 

 found in the action of the Philadelphia Society in 1794. The 

 society appointed a committee to outline a plan for establishing 

 a "State Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, connecting 

 with it the Education of Youth in the knowledge of that most 

 important Art while they are acquiring other useful knowledge 

 suitable for the agricultural citizens of the State." The plan 

 which was drawn up and presented to the society includes some 

 very definite references to agricultural education. Agricultural 

 information was to be disseminated in whatever manner the 

 legislature should think best, "whether by endowing professor- 

 ships to be annexed to the University of Pennsylvania and the 

 College of Carlisle, and other seminaries of learning, or for the 

 purpose of teaching the chemical philosophy and elementary 

 parts of the theory of agriculture." County societies were to be 

 created with "county schoolmasters" as secretaries ; and the school- 

 houses the places of meeting and the repositories of their trans- 

 actions, models, etc. "The legislature may enjoin on these school- 

 masters the combination of the subject of agriculture with other 

 parts of education. This may easily be effected by introducing, 

 as school books, those on this subject, and thereby making it 

 familiar to their pupils" (122, p. 363). The fact that the plan 

 of the committee was rejected does not alter its significance in 

 its bearing upon subsequent developments in agricultural educa- 

 tion. It is especially noteworthy that the plan proposed is in 

 harmony with some present-day practices : the rural school as a 



