342 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



powerfully influences public men) with rural interests. Can anything better 

 prove the want of concert and sympathy on the part of the agriculturists them- 

 selves ? For, as to numbers, take away Baltimore and IS'ew-Orleans, in the 

 slaveholding States, and not more than one in thirty lives in towns, and even 

 with the inhabitants of those cities, not one-sixteenth. Yet look at the spirit of 

 legislation in all those Slates. In what proportion does it lean toward, or is it 

 influenced by, regard for the agricultural class ? 



Let us see, for example, what the Agricultural Committees of the Legislatures 

 now in session will venture even to propose toward agricultural education ; and 

 let us see what will be granted .' 



There are those who may suppose that in these hasty remarks, for instance, 

 there may be something worthy of the consideration of the public and of public 

 men. If so, they would naturally like to see them more widely spread ; but 

 could they get any newspaper in any of these States to give them, or anything 

 like them, circulation? Nous verrons. The Editors of such papers too well 

 understand their business to batter the face of their type in care for men who 

 don't care for themselves. 



But, as to the immediate connection between practical Agriculture and that sci- 

 ence for which Mr. Naill would diffuse some taste and some knowledge in Ma- 

 ryland, the reader is respectfully referred to the observations presented in the fol- 

 lowing chapter. If time allowed, they might be amplified and extended, and 

 will be as opportunity may offer. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR SOME REFORM IN THE COURSE OF INSTRUCTION IN 



COUNTRY SCHOOLS. 

 Let us endeavor to exemplify, in the simplest way that is possible, some of 

 the facts and principles immediately connected with practical Agriculture, and 

 Avhich every boy who is to live by terracullure ought to learn ai school first and 

 before all else, as fast as he has capacity to comprehend them — yes, as invaria- 

 bly and for the same reason that a military student at West Point is taught, by 

 the Government, the principles of fortification, gunnery, or any other branch of 

 the military art. Ask one of these students what is gunpowder, and he will tell 

 you that it is a compound of about 78 parts of saltpetre, 12 of charcoal, and 10 

 of sulphur ; and then he will go on, for his education has taught him to know 

 that its force of explosion is the consequence of the sudden and abundant produc- 

 tion of the gaseous matter expanded by the intense heat resulting from the action 

 of the combustibles upon the nitre ; that the gases evolved are chiefly carbonic 

 oxide, carbonic acid, nitrogen, and sulphurous acid ; and that their volume ex- 

 ceeds two thousand limes the bulk of the powder. And so he can proceed to 

 tell you the nature of, and the difference between, all these gases. This same 

 student, boarded, i)aid and educated at the public expense, will tell you at once 

 that, in the art of gunnery, the object is to hit a proposed mark, at any distance, 

 within the range of the shot ; and then he will go on to explain that, to accom- 

 plish this purpose, it is necessary to know the nature of the path which the ball 

 describes in the air with a given initial velocity, the quantity of powder neces- 

 sary to produce that velocity, and the elevation that must be given to the gun in 

 order to counteract the effect of gravity and the resistance of the air on the ball 

 in its flight ; and all these calculations he is tauglit to make. In short, he is 

 thoroughly instructed, not only in all the brandies of the military art, but in bot- 

 any, mineralogy and chemistry, mining, &c., some of which are as useful and 



(726, 



