144 BOARD O^ AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



contact with the great thoughts of great men ; by the work 

 of experiment and investigation carried on at two stations 

 on the college grounds ; hy the clearer insight into nature's 

 teachings that he will here receive as the mysteries of air 

 and soil and plant are revealed to his delighted vision. Is 

 not this an education greatly to be desired? 



If your boy has a taste for agricidture and kindred pur- 

 suits, then you should send him to the Agricultural College 

 because — 



Second. He will thereby' liecome a more intelligent and 

 therefore a better farmer. 



The word " farmer" is not found in the Bible. The idea 

 is there, but it is " tiller of the soil" and " husbandman." 

 That is a good word, for it implies thrift, prudence, 

 economy. Not economy in the expenditure of money 

 alone, but economy in the use of time and economy of 

 strength as well. AVho docs not need to learn how to econ- 

 omize strength ? and to the farmer or husbandman this lesson 

 is especially valuable. There is a streng-th of vital force in 

 himself and in his beast that he is too apt to squander, and 

 there is a strength in the elements of air and soil and sun- 

 light, in electricity and heat and chemical affinity, that too 

 often is a lamentable waste. Many a farmer boasts of his 

 success in reclaiming waste land who pays little heed to the 

 waste of fertilizing power that is constantly taking place 

 about him, and who, in his ignorance of the chemical com- 

 position of soils and of the adaptation of crops to them, is 

 allowing upon every acre of his domain such a waste of pos- 

 sibility as would lead the scientist to exclaim, "All this is 

 waste land." 



We have been enjoying at the college some lectures from 

 Sir Henry Gilbert, who is connected with the Rothamsted 

 Station in England, which has been carrying on its work of 

 experiment for fifty years, and this gentleman, seventy-six 

 years of age, hale, hearty and strong, has been delivering 

 at the college a course of lectures embodying the results of 

 the experiments at this station. I have not been in a position 

 to follow those lectures, and, in fact, I am not enough of a 

 scientist to have appreciated them if I had, but I will tell you 

 one lesson that has been impressed upon my mind as I have 



