FAIR OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 225 



be pointed to what remains open to be yet achieved, and on these reports 

 schemes of prizes may be framed in the hope of obtaining the desiderata which 

 may be thus indicated. We need hardly say that we shall learn and journalize 

 with great satisfaction what these reports may disclose as indicative of progress 

 in that most important of all industrial occupations lo which our pages are de- 

 voted. It is not to be expected that the praises or premiums of a great National 

 Institute will be bestOAved on things with which the public is already familiar, 

 and that possess not even the merit of novelty in qualify or quantity to recom- 

 mend them. True, the elephant can pick up a pin, but it rarely condescends to 

 employ its colossal trunk for a purpose so little and so beneath it. In Agriculture 

 we shall doubtless have a report, whether there be or be not any thing really 

 new and more efficient in the form and strt;cture of the plow, the harrow, the 

 roller, the cart, the wagon, the threshing-machine, the flax-brake — in the ma- 

 chinery or the mill, to cut or to grind the grass or the grain of the farmer ; 

 whether there be any essential improvement in the appliances or principles for 

 conducting dairy husbandry — any hope of any extended application of steam, or 

 other artilicial power, to lessen the cost or to economize the use of productions 

 to the agriculturist, such as have been devised for the machinist, the manufac- 

 turer, the ship owner, and the merchant. We shall learn, and with pleasure 

 treasure up, from these reports, descriptive statements of any marked meliora- 

 tion in the forms and properties of domestic animals by importation, or new dis- 

 coveries in the art of breeding and the laws of animal physiology ; and perhaps 

 we shall hear that between honors and rewards which smaller institutions are 

 unable to offer or bestow, some able physician or veterinarian, skilled in compara- 

 tive anatomy, has been prevailed on to institute post mortem examinations of 

 horses dying with the prevailing epidemic ; and that remedies for or preventives 

 against it may have been discovered by the agency and public spirit of an Insti- 

 tute ?iational as well in its views as in its name. 



We may have disclosed to us, as have been discovered by the rewards held 

 out by similarmational Societies in England, what new manures have been com- 

 pounded, and what new rotations have been tried, producing better and more 

 ameliorating and pcofitable results for the farmer and his estate. 



At one result of the growing popularity of these Fairs, we maybe allowed par- 

 ticularly to rejoice. It will enable the Trustees to indulge their well known de- 

 sire to put in requisition the best talents of the whole nation, by offering large 

 and liberal rewards for essays on important subjects and branches of national in- 

 dustry and useful science, and such as in their nature require for their elucidation, a 

 range of scientific knowledge which comparatively but a chosen few possess. We 

 may be well assured that a Committee of able and scientific members will be de- 

 tailed to consider with care what subjects we most need to have investigated as 

 connected with the progress of the arts and the advancement of all the industrial 

 pursuits of which it professes guardianship, and whose fruits it displays ; and that, 

 if their funds will admit, they will offer, at the option of the winner of the prize, 

 either the money or plate of value sufficient to prompt our ablest professors of 

 entomology, of agricultural chemistry, of botany, and other natural sciences, to 

 enter the lists. But we are too apt in our country to expect men of science to 

 Grahamize themselves down so far as to live on bran bread or barley gruel and to 

 work for nothing. Such men as Silliraan, and Renwick, and Mapes, and Em- 

 mons, and Smith, and Ruffin, are expected at the beck and call of Tom, Dick and 

 Harry to classify insects and plants, and to analyze soils, and to examine and label 



(465; 15 



