AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 9 



main they were found to be correct, and the necessity for 

 agricultural schools in which to teach the newly developed 

 science of agriculture, became more apparent every where, 

 and accordingly we find that the number of such schools 

 has been increasing with surprising rapidity within the 

 last twenty years. So that at present we find about twenty 

 High Agricultural Schools or Colleges in Germany alone, 

 three in France, one in England, one in Ireland, one in 

 Holland, and in addition to these, several hundred ele- 

 mentary agricultural schools for the peasantry, and a large 

 number of Professorships of Agriculture in the different 

 Universities of Europe. Nearly all the high schools and 

 colleges have farms attached, and extensive means in the 

 laboratory and field to experiment in agricultural science 

 and practice. 



The principal part of them are supported, in part, by 

 state patronage, and their increasing number and import- 

 ance is a marked indication of the necessity of their exist- 

 ence. Even in Russia, an agricultural school was founded 

 near St. Petersburgh about twenty-four years ago, at which 

 the Emperor educated the serfs who were to help manage 

 the immense estates of his realm. They devoted five years 

 to labor and study so as to become familiar with the best 

 methods of agricultural practice, and then were sent one by 

 one to different parts of the Empire to infuse a knowledge 

 of what they had learned into the minds of others; about 

 sixty such were sent out annually; since this time other 

 agricultural schools have been founded in that country. 



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It was hardly possible that the subject of agricultural 

 education should have occupied so prominent a place in 

 the minds of European agriculturists, without attracting a 

 corresponding degree of interest in American minds. In- 

 deed, before any of the great modern scientific agricultural 

 schools of Europe were founded, the necessity for the pro- 

 fessional education of young farmers was proclaimed from 

 American lips. 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN NEW YORK. 



As early as 1838, the Hon. Jesse Buell was pleading the 



