410 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



by the agricultural books, periodicals, and associations, within 

 their reach. Every improvement in these, adds to their facili- 

 ties. Much may also be done by government. State and Na- 

 tional, in collecting and diffusitig correct statistics and informa- 

 tion. A bureau of agriculture in our national government, 

 would be of vast utility, and should be established. Much of 

 the information now collected, is inaccurate, pointless, and with- 

 out purpose. Many of the estimates are erroneous. A recent 

 writer cites one, among many instances, in the last patent re- 

 port, where the wheat crop of Michigan is estimated at 10,000,- 

 000 of bushels, while the census of that State makes it but 

 4,739,299, an over-estimate of more than 100 per cent. Such 

 errors grow out of the defective manner of collecting informa- 

 tion. Again, nothing like the study of agricultural statistics, 

 as a science, exists among us. Until it does, mere statistics are 

 of little value. With a national btneau, properly organized to 

 collect information, and digest and arrange such facts, as it may 

 gather ; with such provisions in aid of it, as different States 

 may make, this result may be accomplished, and its advantage 

 realized by the farmer. When it shall be, a considerable step 

 to agricultural education will have been taken. 



Meantime, it must rely upon the intelligence and skill of 

 those who prosecute it, for most of its advances. It may well 

 do so, in Massachusetts. Our free institutions, our district 

 schools, with their wide open doors, our churches freely sup- 

 ported, our press, our agricultural associations, and village libra- 

 ries, have reared up a class of free and intelligent cultivators of 

 the soil, whose like you cannot find in the world. If there be 

 a people anywhere, among whom agriculture can flourish, as 

 an art, it is here. And 1 rejoice to believe, that even in Massa- 

 chusetts, where commercial and manufacturing interests so 

 largely engross the population, agriculture is the occupation, to 

 which all look for pleasure and retirement, if not for profit. 

 The stripling, just mounted at the counting house desk, or for 

 the first six months, fingering laces, or measuring off cambrics 

 and ginghams, or it may be, just emerging from college walls, 

 looks back to the farm as an escape from drudgery. The mer- 

 chant, the manufacturer, the professional man, on the crowded 



