No. 124.] 171 



years will elapse ere the importance of extensive and solid theoreti- 

 cal, scientific knowledge to the agriculture of a State will become so 

 apparent that appropriate places for youth to study these things will, 

 like railroads, be simultaneously established every where, and a col- 

 lege education will be as requisite for the cultivation of the soil as it 

 is now for medicine, law, or religion. Then, and then only, shall 

 we see agriculture take its proper stand in the nation. Tlien shall 

 all feel it is honorable and certainly more uselul to wield the plough 

 and the reaping-hook than the sword and the gun, and to such a time 

 do I wish the foregoing observation to extend. That those who fol- 

 low agriculture having necessarily received the liberal general edu- 

 cation such institutions secu^i-e, will then be more universally fitted 

 than even now to f 11 with hojior and success the highest offices which 

 can be bestowed on them by their fellow-citizens. 



