AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 467 



the errors of the past, and there will will be improvement upon 

 improvement, and the greatest improvement will be upon the 

 man himself. Man is so constituted, that if he works with his 

 mind, as well as with his hands, he will advance in knowledge. 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



From an Address before the Housatotiic Society, Septem- 

 ber 29, 1853. 



BY HON. H. L. DAWES. 



The Commonwealth encourages the multiplication of societies 

 kindred to the one here assembled, and they are an essential 

 element in the system of agricultural improvement. They per- 

 form an indispensable part in awakening an interest, kindling 

 a love of emulation, a zeal in competition for prizes, which, in 

 their reaction upon the farmer at home and in his fields, are 

 sure incentives to improvement. But I think I may be pardon- 

 ed by you for speaking out here my own conviction, that alone 

 they never will accomplish the work so important, so indispen- 

 sable — the one great duty of the day and the hour — the regene- 

 ration of the soil of Massachusetts. They may be powerful 

 coadjutors, but they do not strike at the root. Their mission 

 is to awaken, to arouse, to stimulate, but not to reveal princi- 

 ple, to unveil the hidden, to enlighten, to educate, or to 

 strengthen. You may, and no doubt have awakened in all the 

 farmers who yearly come up to this fair, a desire to enter into 

 a generous competition in the improvement of their farms. 

 But you have not taught one of them what ails the worn out, 

 barren fields, whose weather-beaten surface mocks his zeal. 

 You have not told him why the same acre will not bear corn 

 through all the years of his life, nor why his manure seems 

 thrown away on one part of his farm, and is comparatively 

 worthless on another. In short, you have not told him what 

 his farm is made of, nor of what are composed the crops he 

 yearly reaps from it. Nor can he learn from you the chemical 

 relation existino- between the soil and the manure which he 



