1847.] Gov. Writgh's Address. 189 



qualified for the labor, and energies equal to its rapid advance- 

 ment. The progress made is bringing together the unsettled mind 

 of the country, and producing the very general impression that the 

 time has arrived when the foundations of a systematic, practical 

 agricultural education should be laid, and the superstructure com- 

 menced. 



It is universally conceded that agriculture has shared but lightly 

 in the fostering care and government patronage which have been 

 liberally extended to commerce and manufactures, nor is it be- 

 lieved that additional public expenditure is necessary to enable 

 the State to do all that can reasonably be required of it, to accom- 

 plish the great object. Our educational funds are rich, and the 

 colleges, academies, and common schools of the state share libe- 

 rally in the distributions from them, while a Normal School, for 

 the education of teachers, instituted at the seat of government, is 

 also mainly supported from these funds. These institutions pre- 

 sent the organization, through which, perhaps better than through 

 any independent channel, this instruction can be universally dis- 

 seminated among the agricultural population of the state. The 

 annual additions to the school district libraries may be made with 

 reference to this branch of education, and thus place within the 

 reach of all the discoveries as they progress, and the rules of hus- 

 bandry deduced from them, as they shall be settled and given to 

 the public from the pens of the competent professors engaged in 

 pursuing the researches. 



This society, and like associations, may, through appropriate 

 committees, their corresponding secretaries, public spirited com- 

 mercial men, and otherwise, collect and embody in their transac- 

 tions, facts and information respecting the markets, foreign and 

 domestic; the present and probable supply of agricultural pro- 

 ducts; the mode and manner of presenting the principal produc- 

 tions in the various markets in the most acceptable form; the state 

 and prospects of trade at home and abroad, and the changes pre- 

 sent and prospective in the commercial policy of our own and other 

 countries, with the probable influences upon the agricultural press 

 will doubtless come powerfully to the aid of the associations, in 

 all efforts of this character, and having these great objects in view. 



In this way the foundation may be gradually laid; and the ma- 

 terials collected for the commencement of those agricultural stu- 

 dies, which time and application, with the constant evidence of 

 their utility in practice, would ripen into a system, to be engraft- 

 ed upon the course of regular studies pursued in the colleges, 

 academies and common schools, and make a branch of the studies 

 of the male classes in the Normal School, placed under the super- 



