PROF. C. U. SHEPHARD'S ADDRESS. 267 



such a scheme, will demand no small share of deliberation and 

 forecast. No institutions are now in existence, upon which they 

 can he directly modeled. In this state of the case, it may not 

 perhaps be deemed impertinent for me to direct the attention of 

 this audience to what has been done in Europe, in behalf of an 

 allied art or profession, which sustains a very close relation to 

 agriculture. I allude to that of mining. Like agriculture, it 

 requires the use of numerous sciences. As the farmer must 

 know his crops, together with many other plants which are 

 either useless or noxious, so the miner must be able to recognize 

 his ores, and those associated mineral substances, which are 

 either worthless or injurious. As the farmer must understand 

 his soils and sub-soils, and the connection of both with the rock 

 formations in which they originated, so the miner must compre- 

 hend the various strata, which include his veins and beds of ore. 

 The different processes employed in harvesting and preparing 

 crops for the markets, are, in some sense, analogous to the rais- 

 ing and dressing of ores ; while draining, surveying, and archi- 

 tecture, are required in both. Farming and mining both make 

 a constant and similar use of chemistry, in the work of analysis. 

 There is indeed this difference, that the labors of the miner are 

 attended with much greater risks as to remuneration, and with 

 greatly increased dangers to health and life. But it is reasona- 

 ble, nevertheless, that institutions expressly contrived for the 

 benefit of the miner, and which have been nearly a century in 

 existence, should throw some light upon those we would invent 

 for the use of the farmer. 



The most ancient of these institutions, is that of Freiberg, in 

 Saxony. It was founded in 1765, by Prince Xavier, and early 

 placed under the control of the celebrated mineralogist, Werner. 

 At the present time, it has eleven professors, on the following 

 branches : viz., general chemistry, technical chemistry, analyt- 

 ical chemistry, mineralogy and geology in all their branches, nat- 

 ural philosophy, the pure and the higher mathematics, mathe- 

 matics applied, mining machinery, general surveying and prac- 

 tical geometry, mining jurisprudence and correspondence, and 

 the art of mining. In addition to the corps of professors, it has 

 a surveyor, a draftsman, an assay-master, and a teacher of 



