Vl> 



60 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



course we have boys of different characters and different capac- 

 ities. Some, are lively, some are smart, and some are the other 

 way ; but as a whole — as a class — they have far exceeded our 

 anticipations. No fault can be found with them. The thing is 

 a perfect success. But " one swallow does not make a sum- 

 mer," and one term cannot finally settle the question. I say 

 that, for to-day it is^ttled. I find, on comparing the marks of 

 the professor of agriculture with the marks of the professors in 

 other branches, tliat the two correspond identically ; that the 

 boy who has a clean record with the professor of agriculture 

 marks highest in every other department ; it is invariable. 



Another question you will ask, is, " What have you taught 

 the boys in relation to agriculture ? " So far as my teaching is 

 concerned, I have taught them what the Board of Agriculture 

 have taught me. That I call pretty good teaching. Of course 

 we had no text-books on agriculture there. In the next place, 

 we had no. system of agriculture there. I am sorry to say 

 that here m Massachusetts to-day, although the Board of Agri- 

 culture has been at work for fifteen years, we have no system of 

 agriculture — nothing that a man can teach a class of students 

 and say, " This is the established, approved system of agricul- 

 ture for Massachusetts." We have jio such thing. Commenc- 

 ing with the soil, our course of instruction has been to give its 

 origin; the manner in whicli it was prepared for tlie purposes 

 of cropping ; the material in the soil by which plant-food is 

 formed ; tlien the influences in the soil which go to make that 

 raw material up into food for plants ; then the manner in which 

 the plants themselves take up and appropriate that food to their 

 own uses, and form their bodies and their roots from it ; next 

 the effect of cropping upon the soil itself — what the process is, 

 what the effect upon the soil is, and what the condition of the 

 soil is after a course of cropping, running down to exhaustion ; 

 next the methods by which the fertility of the soil can be 

 increased ; or how, without manuring, the soil can be restored 

 from barrenness to fertility ; next ploughing in green crops as 

 one method, under-draining, irrigation, the use of muck, 

 ploughing and stirring the soil, as sources of fertility ; then 

 animal manures, their character, their composition, how they 

 act in the soil, chemically, mechanically, &c. Tiiat has been 

 the course of instruction in the institution, and that is as far as 



