THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 67 



which bears this test may become a law at once for the farming 

 community, and until it has borne such a test it is theory still, 

 no matter what its origin may have been, whether college or 

 farmyard. While, therefore, an agricultural school can be no 

 more than a collection of intelligent gentlemen, devoted to sci- 

 ence as a guide to agriculture, and engaged in cultivating a 

 single farm according to the best known principles, it must 

 depend upon a wide-spread community of farmers for the last 

 grand process of proving and diffusing its theories. And when 

 we remember that agriculture is not an exact science, and can- 

 not be until the skies and seasons are subdued by man, and that 

 the facts discovered in the field by the diligent cultivator are 

 often of more practical value than those laid down by the student 

 in his closet, we shall not be surprised at the superior success 

 wliich societies have thus far met with as compared with schools 

 in the work of advancing agricultural education. I say have 

 thus far met ivith, because I think there is valuable work yet to 

 be done by the schools, which it would be well for our States to 

 remember in founding their agricultural colleges. 



Why, gentlemen, all the literature of agriculture goes to con- 

 firm this view. The books to which the farmer turns most 

 eagerly for knowledge are those which contain just those facts 

 to which I have referred as a part of the treasury of an agricul- 

 tural society. Arthur Young, traversing all England for the 

 materials out of which to write his admirable volumes ; Jethro 

 Tull, toiling with his own hands in order to extract from the 

 soil itself the doctrines of horse-hoeing and drill husbandry with 

 which to enrich his native island ; Mr. Cully, devoted to the 

 improvement of cattle as the best college in which to learn how 

 to discuss their breeding and feeding; Fitzherbert, who, 

 although chief justice of common pleas, was, as he tells us, " an 

 experyenced farmer of more than forty yeares," and wrote the 

 " Booke of Husbandrie ; " and so the admirable writers of mod- 

 ern days, all write from the great standpoint of experience. 

 What richer fountain of agricultural knowledge can be found 

 than the transactions of the Royal and Highland Societies ? 

 Where can a better lesson be read than is contained in those 

 modest volumes issued annually by our local societies, and con- 

 taining the recorded experience of the successful farmer of the 

 neighborhood ? We turn to this with confidence and hope, and 



8* . . 



