60 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



capacities, who, regardless of the theory of the physiologist, 

 secures animals adapted to his own locality, and perpetuates 

 and improves them by confining himself to his own herds for 

 means of increase. 



It is important to bear this in mind in our estimate of what 

 the community requires in the way of agricultural education. 

 We may so misdirect our attempts to enlighten the people on. 

 this matter as to lead them away from the farm instead of 

 encouraging their hearts and strengthening their hands for the 

 business of agriculture. We may become so confused and 

 shaken in our trust in the laws of nature by our investigations 

 as to lose that love of all her works, which lies at the foundation 

 of good farming. But if by steady progress in the accumulation 

 of facts which are indisputable, and by patient devotion to the 

 work of drawing sound deductions from those facts, the wonder- 

 ful attractions of nature are revealed, and her unerring fidelity 

 is confirmed, the student of agriculture may go forth from 

 the college to his occupation, bound not by necessity to the 

 drudgery of his farm, but devoted with all his powers to the 

 business of agriculture as an ennobling, useful and profitable 

 art. 



In saying this I endeavor to estimate science aright. We all 

 know the value of scientific men. We all know that they have 

 revealed to us those great laws, a knowledge of which has ele- 

 vated us above the grovelling regions of superstition and igno- 

 rance and terror, into the high heaven of Christian admiration 

 and reverence. They have taught us how to purify our cities, 

 how to retain our health and how to regain it, what we are in 

 the scale of being, and to what a marvellous system of grand 

 and subtle forces in the animal and vegetable and mineral 

 kingdom we belong. We know how much they have done to 

 enlighten and civilize mankind. But when they enter with us 

 upon the field of agricultural investigation, we ask them to 

 pause with us before that unexplored region where lie the 

 strange forces which we and they admire, obey and leave with 

 the great God who made them. 



Come now, practical farmer with me, and see what you 

 have done for the development of your calling, guided by the 

 light of experience alone. You have discovered that remark- 

 able system of drainage by which the hard and unyielding bed 



