210 WORCESTER SOCIETY. 



curse of war. And neither poetry nor eloquence can be spared 

 in our age from the service of the plough. Let an attempt be 

 once made in earnest to draw audiences together to listen to 

 good agricultural lectures, and it is believed, more will be ef- 

 fected for general improvement in farming than could be secured 

 in any other way, at so little expense. Such lectures should 

 be delivered in all our towns to accomplish their object. The 

 periodical addresses at the cattle show do not reach all who 

 could and would hear local addresses nearer their houses. 

 /' It is suggested, secondly, that more attention might profita- 

 ' bly be paid to agricultural studies in our common schools. 

 Who would conjecture from our reading books, that the pupils 

 using them belong to farmer's families, to a great extent ? How 

 lean is our school literature on this subject. Why should not 

 practical information respecting soil and vegetation be deemed 

 as worthy of study as the human system? Yet multitudes 

 study the school book on anatomy and physiology who never 

 see Gray's, or any other author's school book on agricultural 

 chemistry. It would be no loss to mechanics' sons to learn to 

 plant gardens. An early interest in such work would not tend 

 to increase street riotings or roving boys. Would it not be 

 easy, by suitable efforts at school, to induce even children to 

 anticipate rural employments with joy, and voluntarily to com- 

 , mence them in the flower bed, if not allowed a wider garden 

 i range. The minds of children who have grown up amid the 

 fascinations of good husbandry, and been sent to school where 

 the clustering vine and smiling flower adorned their school 

 room, never tire, in after years, of the employments of their 

 childhood. In "distant lands, where foreign summers glow," 

 the Swiss remembers his home, and delights in the same kind 

 of labor which covers his native soil with verdure. The picture 

 of some of the European public school establishments is cer- 

 tainly suggestive to our yankee spirits, prone as we are to " in- 

 vent every thing that is not invented," and use every thing 

 which is invented. There stands the teacher's cottage, with its 

 fruit trees, and garden in near contiguity to the school building, 

 with its play ground, and flower yard, where children vie with 

 each other in the production of rich boquets to adorn the school 



