446 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



It will not be advisable to plant such institutions under the 

 shade of our classical colleges. They will never flourish there ; 

 for other studies of a different nature, appropriate to their edu- 

 cational establishments, occupy their attention, and the leaves 

 of ancient literature cast too deep a shade to admit of the 

 growth of modern science in the academic groves.* 



An agricultural school should be of an eminently practical 

 character to meet the wants of the community. Every prin- 

 ciple taught should be immediately practically illustrated, and 

 the pupil should be required to repeat every operation until he 

 becomes familiar with it, and thus fixes the principle and mode 

 of operation indelibly in his memory. In the field he should 

 be required to work with his own hands ; whether with the 

 plough or the compass, he should become familiar with his 

 tools. So also in the laboratory he should be required to do 

 his own work, and in the dissecting room should learn the anat- 

 omy of animals, and in the garden and study, that of plants. 

 Much good will result from the establishment of thoroughly 

 scientific and practical agricultural schools, and it is highly de- 

 sirable that the experiment should be made forthwith. I am 

 confident such institutions will be sustained by the people. 



The imperfect state of American agriculture, and the de- 

 structive system of exhaustion of our soils by methods now 

 too extensively in operation, sufficiently indicate the necessity 

 of an immediate reform. Look on the numerous exhausted or 

 impoverished fields of eastern Virginia, and to the diminishing 

 fertility of the wheat lands of New York, and other States, and 



* There is no time to be spared, from the usual college course of study, for the pursuit of 

 the sciences connected with agriculture, in a thorough practical way, and no other method 

 of studying them will prove of any permanent value. " There are in the whole four years, 

 one hundred and sixty weeks of study. Suppose the student pursues twenty of these 

 branches of learning, [the usual college course,] this will allow eight weeks to each. Seven- 

 eighths of the first year, and one half of the second, are devoted to Latin, Greek, and mathe- 

 matics. If we subtract this amount, fifty-five weeks from one hundred and sixty, it leaves 

 one hundred and five weeks to be devoted to the remainder. 'I'his will give us six weeks 

 and a fraction to each of the other studies. But this is not all. In order to introduce so 

 many sciences into the period of four years, the student is frequently obliged to carry on five 

 or six at the same time ; some occupying him three times, others twice, and others once in a 

 week. In this manner, all continuity of thought is interrupted, and literary enthusiasm ren- 

 dered almost impossible. Such has, to a greater or less degree, been the course pursued 

 by all our colleges." President Wayland's Report to the Corporation of Brow n Univer- 

 sity, March 28th, 1850, p. 15. 



