70 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



been of the nighest value. It has been well worth while for 

 the State of Massachusetts to establish and maintain its agri- 

 cultural college, not only for the sake of the influences this 

 institution has exerted at home, but also for the sake of the 

 contributions which it has made to enlightenment in other 

 States by sending well-trained, earnest workers to become 

 teachers and investigators in their colleges and experiment 

 stations. 



Consider the local benefits. What a vast amount of scien- 

 tific, well-organized, useful facts and principles have been 

 assimilated by New England agriculture during the past 

 twenty-five years. How has this been accomplished? What 

 have been the avenues along which this knowledge has 

 reached the mass of farmers ? You know the answer, — 

 imitation of good example, contact of man with man and 

 instruction from the platform and through the press. But 

 what has been the centre of agitation, the immediate source 

 of this information which has radiated to every hamlet and 

 farm of your State? Your college here at Amherst. This 

 institution has been the local interpreter of the lessons of 

 modern science, the vital connection between you as farmers 

 and that world-wide application of nature's laws and methods 

 which is now upon us. It has sent out men who have become 

 centres of local influence ; its faculty and graduates have 

 stood on farmers' institute platforms and have freely contrib- 

 uted to the literature of advanced agriculture. The publica- 

 tions of your experiment stations have been the feeding 

 ground of the agricultural press ; and the opinions and 

 researches of the experts congregated here have been 

 widely quoted as authority in the difficult matters of farm 

 practice. 



As I have tried to show, the direct instruction of the great 

 masses of farmers in the college class room is not likely to 

 be realized. In the world at large existing conceptions of 

 truth in science, government and religion have filtered to the 

 people through conversation, reading and public discussion. 

 So have the modern views of farm practice as seen in the 

 light of science been spread abroad, and back of this propa- 

 ganda of a new gospel for the farmer have stood and will 

 continue to stand the agricultural colleges as organizing and 



