68 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc 



them. If he believed in the efficacy of teaching the principles 

 of agriculture to his children, would he not provide some 

 simple text-book of that kind for his own children in his own 

 schools? Millions of dollars are being expended in these 

 United States every year for agricultural colleges, and 

 hardly a text-book on agricultural science even in its simplest 

 form — and the simpler the better — in all our country 

 schools ; those schools that lie alongside of the farmer, that 

 touch every fibre of his being, from which he has become 

 what he is. Ninety-seven per cent of all the farmers of the 

 United States have received no education except such as 

 they give. The American farmer will admit the necessity 

 of an education for the lawyer, the doctor, the preacher, the 

 editor, the merchant or mechanic. To fit his son for battle 

 in any of these divisions, he will work and save as no other 

 man on earth ever worked or saved. The annals of American 

 farm life abound in examples of sacrifice for the education of 

 children in everything but farming, that are without parallel 

 among any other people. He sees clearly that, if his boy is 

 to understand the principles of law, or of medicine, or of 

 mechanics, or of banking, he must look into books and read 

 there the record of the experience and judgment that have 

 gone before him. He must train the intellect to discern a 

 principle in the printed page, and then by practice learn 

 how to apply that principle to produce material results. Are 

 there no principles in agriculture, — that science which in- 

 cludes in its necessities all other sciences? Do you suppose 

 that the farmers who swarmed out of New England and New 

 York into Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and the farther West, 

 would have destroyed the fertility of their lands as they have 

 done, if they had been taught in the country schools the 

 meaning of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, as manurial 

 agents? The average farmer must stand up and face the 

 results of his low averageness. 



Look at the average cow of the Northern States. "What 

 is she good for? Let me tell you. At an expense of sev- 

 eral hundred dollars, three years ago I employed Mr. C. W. 

 Jennings to take a thorough census of the cows of the town- 

 ship of Ellisburg, Jefferson Co., N. Y. He spent several 



