No. 4.] BOARDS OF AGRICULTURE. 33 



exchequer by economy in manures, feeding stuffs and labor, 

 and despairingly continues an existence on an impoverished 

 and weed-grown farm. This process has long been watched 

 by the agricultural expert, and the only plausible means of 

 relief is the applying of the educational preliminaries, 

 accepted as essential to all other industries, to this, per- 

 haps the most complex of all. In cereals we cannot rival 

 perhaps the broad prairies of the West, but we can make a 

 profit in producing those things demanded by the near market 

 in fresh and palatable condition, if we have the advantage of 

 adequate education. This may be sneered at by some as 

 professional teaching or book farming ; but, as a writer has 

 well said, "Without this, in the future bankrupt farmers, 

 pauper laborers, unfilled soil and a deserted countryside 

 will wait penally upon the antiquated process and the un- 

 skilled worker." ■ 



Boards of agriculture and managers of educational insti- 

 tutions can provide the means for an agricultural education, 

 and to a certain extent create a demand for it and popular- 

 ize it ; but there is also a responsibility in this matter rest- 

 ing upon the New England farmers that cannot be borne by 

 others. 



We cannot allow this opportunity to pass without ex- 

 pressing what we believe to be a growing sentiment in favor 

 of rural life ; and yet as we travel over New England we 

 notice many homesteads once occupied by those sturdy 

 fathers and mothers of Puritanic descent, who were honor- 

 able men and women in every sense of the word, honest, 

 industrious, temperate, self-reliant, patriotic, Christian peo- 

 ple. They were the foundation from which have descended 

 those sons and daughters who have built up our New Eng- 

 land cities and developed the great West. Our hearts are 

 filled with sadness as we notice many of these places occu- 

 pied by strangers who are entirely wanting in the qualities 

 which made the former class famous. They but poorly 

 fill the places of those who went out from these rural dis- 

 tricts to make a world-wide reputation for this great and 

 glorious nation. 



We believe some time in the future our New England 

 boards of agriculture and agricultural colleges will rejuve- 



