98 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



be. I believe that if the people will stand behind us and 

 give us money enough to fight it, we can hold it back and 

 even exterminate it ; and how much money and trouble will 

 be saved to the farmers of the country if we can do this. 

 Let us have money enough and men enough to fight it. Let 

 us teach the farmers' boys how to fight it, and to hit a head 

 every time it shows itself. 



Mr. Bowker. If it is not too late, I want to call the 

 meeting back to the paper which was read, as we have a 

 gentleman here who can tell us something of what has been 

 done in one of our sister States. I refer to Dr. Twitchell of 

 Maine. 



Dr. G. M. Twitchell (of Fairfield, Me.). Mr. Chair- 

 man and Gentlemen : The hour is late, and there is no time 

 for any extended remarks to-night. I felt when Governor 

 Hoard was talking as though I would like to say a word, 

 but the discussion drifted off into another channel. The 

 Maine State Grange a few years ago took up this subject of 

 agricultural education, raised a commission to thoroughly 

 investigate the subject, and authorized the preparation of a 

 work on the "Science of Agriculture." Fortunately we 

 have among our local force a graduate of Brown University, 

 the former principal of one of our high schools, who has 

 gone back upon a farm and is doing a grand work. We 

 put him in charge of the matter. The book was published 

 by a Chicago firm this past season, and all through the sum- 

 mer you would have been astonished to see how our educa- 

 tional men were tumbling over each other in their anxiety to 

 get that book into the schools. They seemed to think that 

 that was the only way by which they could save agriculture 

 in the State of Maine. But really it is a valuable little 

 book, meeting the case. Professor Stetson of Auburn, the 

 superintendent of schools in that city, told me the other day 

 that he had about forty teachers under his care, and he 

 hoped that he would be able during the year to interest three 

 or four of them and get them at work upon the subject in an 

 intelligent manner ; and if he did he should feel that he had 

 been successful in doing something towards enlarging the 

 common course of study, and something for which the teach- 

 ers must be specially fitted. But the work has been taken 



