No. 4.] BOARDS OF AGRICULTURE. 43 



gent kind, and was adapted for use in schools. It must 

 have been somewhere in the early fifties that it was pub- 

 lished. * 



Mr. J. H. Hale (of South Glastonbury, Conn.). Mr. 

 Chairman, members of the Board and friends : I certainly 

 am glad to be here, and was particularly interested in the 

 thoughtful and worthy address of the secretary of the New 

 Hampshire Board of Agriculture. I think he dropped very 

 many thoughts that should be acceptable to this Board and 

 all boards of agriculture in this country. It seemed to me, 

 when he was talking of the various things that boards might 

 accomplish, he mapped out a pretty broad programme, that 

 there was more than would be likely to be accomplished in 

 a lifetime, but it was in the right line. The institutes, it 

 seems to me, are carrying the gospel of progressive agri- 

 culture into the hearts and homes of the people that need 

 it most. The institute work needs to develop and broaden 

 out. It is all very well to plan an institute and secure one 

 or more speakers on practical topics and send them to a 

 community ; but the institutes are not thoroughly advertised 

 and the people are not called out, and the speaker talks to 

 the benches, or to the people who are already awake and 

 who need it least. It seems to me that there is a great need 

 of a rising interest in these institutes. I was particularly 

 interested in the matter of carrying agriculture into our 

 public schools, and I was even more interested when our 

 worthy chairman said that the mind can be trained just as 

 well from the study of agriculture or horticulture as in any 



other line. If you do nothing else for a year, you have 







* Soon after the State Board of Agriculture was incorporated, in 1852, a commit- 

 tee was appointed to consider the expediency of preparing a manual on agriculture 

 for the use of common schools, and in 1856 a similar vote was passed ; but no defi- 

 nite action was taken until, in 1860, the Board "Resolved, That the committee on 

 agricultural education be authorized to prepare an elementary manual of agricult- 

 ure for the use of our common schools," and do what was possible to secure its in- 

 troduction. This resulted in the preparation of a manual by the secretary of the 

 Board, Mr. Chas. L. Flint, and Mr. Geo. B. Emerson (author of report on the trees 

 and shrubs of Massachusetts), which was read to the Board by Mr. Emerson. 

 An agreement for publishing the same was made, and Jan. 25, 1861, the Board 

 "Resolved, That this Board approve of the ' Manual of Agriculture,' submitted by 

 its authors, Messrs. Geo. B. Emerson and Charles L. Flint, and recommend its 

 publication by those gentlemen as a work well adapted for use in the schools of 

 Massachusetts." 



