SECRETARY'S REPORT. 269 



If this is a correct statement of their position, the idea of 

 commencing in a lower grade school with the intention of going 

 up into the higher scientific institute afterwards, as a sort of 

 finishing off of their education, is equally impracticable ; that is, 

 according to them, it would be beginning at the wrong end. 

 Whether they are correct or not, it is not for me to say ; but I 

 give it as the result of their long experience, and of their 

 thought and observation upon the subject, and as such worthy 

 of careful consideration in establishing similar institutions 

 with us. 



I do not know that it would serve any good purpose to enter 

 at length into a development of the controversy now going on 

 in Germany upon this question, owing to the fact, already inti- 

 mated, that the state of society is so different, the lines of caste 

 there so nicely drawn, and the objects proposed in an agricultural 

 education so distinct from our own. But it may be remarked 

 that Liebig has taken the ground very strenuously in favor of a 

 connection with the universities, and that a great majority of 

 the agriculturists adopt that view, or take a middle ground, 

 that the location should be in the immediate vicinity of some 

 established university, partly as a means of bringing the 

 students under university laws, and partly as a means of giving 

 the professors a higher position in the estimation of their 

 pupils, and of availing themselves of the advantages of the 

 collections, libraries, &c., which a university can offer, as well 

 as of the talent of university professors. Volumes have been 

 written upon the subject. 



The question in favor of the universities has been fully stated 

 in a work of 200 pages octavo, by Dr. Birnbaum of the Uni- 

 versity of Giessen, entitled The Universities and Isolated Agri- 

 cultural Institutes, Giessen, 1862. He sums up in the following 

 propositions : — 



(1.) The simultaneous application of the practical skill 

 requisite for management and the theoretical knowledge neces- 

 sary for understanding the business, is inadmissible, and for 

 teachers and pupils alike impracticable. 



(2.) The practicing farmer, the practical man, is, as a rule, 

 in all cases in which he directs his estate, not quite adapted to 

 give instruction, not suitable as a teacher for beginners, but 

 indeed — capacity and desire aside — to be recommended as a 



