AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. 529 



of general average produce or management — that among (we don't say because) 

 subscribers to this journal in Talbot and in Dorchester counties, two of them the 

 past season grew, one upward of 70 bushels of Indian corn to the acre, on more 

 than forty acres, and tlie other 2,000 barrels on two hundred acres ; and this com 

 might be shelled from the fields where it grew, into the holds of vessels, at the 

 rate of 1,000 bushels a day, by machines invented by one of these farmers, and 

 be transported to a cash market for 4 or 5 cents a bushel. Why he forever 

 dreaming of change ? Is it not better to let very well alone — except in trying 

 to improve it ? 



AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. 



GROWING EXCITEMENT ON THE SUBJECT— COURSE OF INSTRUCTION PROPER TO BE 



PURSUED IN THEM. 



Rarely, within our observation, has the public mind evinced more numerous 

 and unequivocal signs of increasing and general interest on any subject than is 

 now manifested, more and more, every day, in reference to Agricultural Educa- 

 tion. Three long columns of a late Albany paper are filled with a highly edify- 

 ing and important discussion on Agricultural Colleges, in which Members of the 

 Legislature and of the State Agricultural Society participated. We should re- 

 joice to see this debate copied into every paper in the Union ; and how much 

 more useful for general reading and consideration would it be than the incidents 

 of party struggles, and the details of bloody battles ! 



It was well done, on the part of Mr. S. Howard, " of the Cultivator," to warn 

 the public not to be too impatient for carrying out and realizing the public wishes 

 in this matter. " He thought the necessity of having a plan fully matured and 

 understood as obvious. It was the wise remark of Franklin to his nephew that 

 in whatever he did there should be a flan. The causes of failure had been in 

 the intrinsic defects in organization." " The qualifications necessary lor the 

 management of such a school are rarer than are at first imagined. They em- 

 brace the whole variety of agricultural knowledge." 



Many gentlemen took part in the discussion, with a degree of earnestness 

 that evinced much anxious reflection and that gives assurance that the people 

 are beginning to be persuaded that they have a right to use their own means for 

 the instruction of their own children in the art and principles of their own busi- 

 ness. We venture to express the opinion that these schools should not be left, 

 any more than naval or military schools, to depend on individual contribution. 

 They are, of all schools, the most proper objects for, and the most entitled to 

 public patronage. In every State, its proportion of the proceeds of the public 

 lands should be appropriated exclusively to the support of Normal Schools, in 

 which young men should be gratuitously prepared to act as agricultural profes- 

 sors in subordinate county and district establishments. In the mean time, might 

 not a direction be given to the patronage now bestowed on the district schools in 

 the State of New- York that Avould throw into the course of education pursued 

 in them a deeper infusion of agricultural knowledge and literature ? 



But v/e have no space or time now to discuss details. We beg again for the 

 sympathy and aid of the Press in pressing this subject home to the minds of the 

 people — the farmers throughout the country. Let us go on begetting the wilU 



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