YALE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL 101 



gest, so science alone lacks that which practice is naturally 

 fitted to supply ; each is the complement of the other ; rational 

 agriculture is the result of their union. The great laws that 

 control vegetable and animal production being once estab- 

 lished by pure science, science in conjunction with practice 

 must apply those laws, must study their bearings and follow 

 out their details. In the field and the laboratory, then, 

 observation and experiment are to reveal to us the new facts 

 which shall be the materials for agricultural progress. . . . 



The method I have roughly sketched must inevitably lead 

 to good results, whose number will only be limited by the zeal 

 and skill that we enlist in these great inquiries. Not merely 

 will they be of immediate influence upon our noble science 

 of agriculture opening to us the mysteries of nature's work- 

 ings but, as always happens, the increase of knowledge will 

 react on its diffusion. ... So it will be with agricultural 

 progress. The interest aroused by the very effort to discover 

 the new will vitalize the old. . . . The intellectual life of the 

 farmer will become more vigorous and healthful. He will 

 cease to be mechanical and prejudiced, and more nearly 

 attain to the true dignity of a wide seeing and deeply think- 

 ing man. These special studies carried out on an extensive 

 scale will have the effect to make agriculture appreciated as 

 a profession. Educated young men will be attached to it as 

 an intellectual pursuit. Finally, the influence of special agri- 

 cultural inquiries, prosecuted as I have mentioned, will be to 

 modify and reform our existing practice generally. The un- 

 profitable and even wasteful management, now not rare in 

 our state, will give place to a more judicious and rational 

 system, conducive at once to the prosperity and beauty of 

 our country. . . . 



I have full faith not only that science may accomplish 

 much for agriculture in the way I have indicated, but that 

 she will be speedily put about the work. The tendencies of 

 our time prophesy this. The notion that there is anything 

 essentially antagonistic between science and practice is daily 



