AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS. PREMIUMS. 531 



Geology and Mineralogy. — The objects of the Professor in this course are to 

 convey, in the most familiar and instructive manner, the fundamental principles 

 of these sciences ; their connection with Clicmistry, Botany, Zoology, Astronomy, 

 and Physics ; and their practical application to several of the most important 

 wants and utjlities of life. 



Natural and Experimental Philosophy. — This department embraces instruc- 

 tion in the elements of Mechanics, the maihematical principles of Statics, or the 

 art of weighing solid bodies ; Hydrostatics, or the art of weighing fluids ; Dynam- 

 ics, or the science of the motion of bodies that mutually act on each other ; and 

 Hydraulics, with their various practical applications ; the theory of the stren'^th 

 of materials, of the stability of structures, the principles of mechanism, the dy- 

 namical theory of machines, and of the steam-engine in particular, are fully ex- 

 plained, and the lectures are amply illustrated by models, diagrams, ice. 



Practical Survf.yinc; and Leveling. — This course is at once theoretical and 

 practical ; in the school it embraces the various in-door details of a land survey- 

 or's oflice ; and in the field, the uses and applications of the several surveying 

 instruments. It also includes the measurement of timber and artificer's work, 

 the theory and practice of leveling and draining, the making of sections, and 

 mapping from the field-book, and all the requisite and practical detail of geodesy, 

 or the art of surveying the earth on whatever scale. 



Analysis of Soils, etc. — The analysis of soils, manurcb', the various chem- 

 icals used in the arts, as well as all the varieties of minerals, are undertaken, for 

 the purpose of determining their value ; estates surveyed and mapped ; timber 

 measured and valued. 



It is not that Professors well qualified are not to be found in our country, if 

 suitable rewards and distinction were offered. We doubt not our military school 

 graduates every year a number who would make very distinguished instructors 

 in several departments, but they are for the most part either the sons of men of 

 independent fortune, who return to their estates, or who choose to follow more 

 attractive professions, or who remain in the army, where their pay, besides being 

 equal, or nearly so, in the beginning, to our best-paid professors, carries with it 

 the inestimable advantage of a life commission and sure increase of rank and 

 emoluments. 



For a single institution it would be easy at once to name highly accomplished 

 Professors, were it not invidious, but it would be to the dishonor of the country 

 to suppose that such men are not already better provided for. But truth and 

 justice, after all, demand the acknowledgment that in no department of social 

 life and useful labors is such gross and short-sighted injustice perpetrated by so- 

 ciety as in its mean estimate of the pay and respect due to rnstruclors of youth. 

 The money expended for military purposes, even in time of profound peace, 

 would secure to the 7nass of young persons throughout the United States such 

 an education as is described above. Is it possible that an enlightened, self- 

 governing people will much longer forbear to demand this more noble and salu- 

 tary appropriation of their contributions for the support of Government ? 



1^ The List of Premiums offered by the New- York State Agricultural Society 

 has been received from tlie obliging and accomplished Secretary, and extracts have been pre- 

 pared, with such observations as they seemed to su!,'gest; but want of room comptls their post- 

 ponement to our next number, in June. The approbation expressed will not, we hope, be the 

 less acceptable for not being altogether wholesale and indiscriminate. 

 (1051) 



