58 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Feb. 



the attainment of professional education, un- 

 less, at least, to a mature and quick mind, already 

 well-disciplined and stored by a course of prepara 

 tory studies. 



It is worthy of consideration, however, what 

 studies would be most usefully pursued at the com- 

 mon schools, by a boy who was designed for the 

 business of agriculture, and having reference to his 

 greater accomplishment and skilfulness in that sci- 

 ence. To this end, arithmetic and the common math- 

 ematics, geometry, and surveying, are particu- 

 larly adapted to be of the greatest use. Arithme- 

 tic, to make him expert at accounts, and in all those 

 calculations which are essential in a well considered 

 plan of farming operations ; as well as in the con- 

 tracts which may be necessary for the improvement 

 of his farm, by buildings or otherwise; in the esti- 

 mate of profits or losses, in his expenditure, or in 

 his common contracts of sale or purchase. The 

 usefulness of a knowledge of surveying is obnous, 

 in the purchase or sale of land, settling boundaries 

 with his neighbor, or estimating the contents of his 

 tillage or mowing. Geometry is no less so, in the 

 superficial or the solid measures of the material in 

 use by him, or matters coming under his care. But 

 the mathematics and geometry have a more im- 

 portant and general usefulness in training his mind, 

 giving to it that habit of exactness which is of 

 most especial benefit, and essential to the right 

 qualifications of a farmer, more than perhaps of any 

 other, excej)t a lawyer. No other study has such 

 effect in producing this habit, as that of mathemat- 

 ics or geometry. These studies of the common 

 school or academy, we hold to be indispensable in 

 the foundation-work of a thorough farmer's educa- 

 tion. And these studies are not only indispensable, 

 but they are enough for a boy of common intellect 

 and common industry to master, in the usual term 

 of a common-school education. To our mind, it 

 would be as sensible for a man to undertake to rear 

 a magnificent edifice on the same day that its foun- 

 dation is laid, to perform the whole work in both 

 departments of the building in one day, as to per- 

 form the whole work of an education so compre- 

 hensive as that involved in the sciences pertainintj 

 to agriculture, at a common school. Where will 

 the time be found for storing the mind with only 

 the principles of chemistry, geology, botany, vege- 

 til;le physiology and anatomy, to say nothing of 

 that body of knowledge in details, which it is the 

 part of a thorough knowledge of agriculture to at- 

 tain ; we mean scientific knowledge, which is entire- 

 ly independent of that understanding of the manual 

 or mechanical operations which is learned by prac- 

 tice only, and which comprises the handicraft of 

 husbandry. In this reference to the studies which 

 should enter into the plan of education of a farmer, 

 we are far enough from presenting the case more 

 unfavorably to the idea of a common school educa- 



tion than should justly to be done, by exaggera- 

 tion, or over-statement of the amount and extent 

 of knowledge that is to be included in such educa- 

 tion. On the contrary, we have not undertaken to 

 enumerate all the studies that should be included 

 in a full course of instruction. It will occur to 

 every one who considers the subject, that a study 

 of the laws of mechanics, for instance, is indispen- 

 sable to making an accomplished culturist, as it is 

 to the plan of any complete education. 



The plan of an agricultural school or college, 

 which has also its advocates, offers more promise of 

 usefulness to the student in agricultural science. 



There can hardly, indeed, be a question, that a 

 jn-ofessional school, established for teaching the sci- 

 ences that have relation to the art of agriculture, 

 similar to the schools of theolog)', law, or medicine, 

 may be of great advantage in fitting a man for the 

 skilful and well-directed practice of husbandry. 

 At such a school, the requisites for entrance being 

 a previous good common-school education, inclu- 

 ding especially a good knowledge of arithmetic, 

 (and to make it of the best degree of usefulness, ge- 

 ometry and surveying also,) the student might be 

 initiated into that extensive field of science which 

 makes up the sum of the knowledge of agriculture. 

 Whatever study is to be undertaken in course, and 

 by the methodical and systematic instruction of the 

 school, must be done at such an institution as this, 

 especially designed for the pursuit of professional 

 studies, and instilled into a mind matured by age, 

 and expanded and disciplined by a course of pre- 

 paratory learning. The mind is a thing of gradual 

 growth, no less than the animal body, or the trunk 

 and branches of the tree. It is more gradual than 

 either. And the mind of the child is less able to 

 receive the higher parts of knowledge than his 

 body is to take the amount of stimulus, or endure 

 the degree of labor of which a man is capable. 

 Such a school might be either connected with a 

 university or separate. The schools for law, physic, 

 and divinity are sometimes connected with a univer- 

 sity, and in other cases separate. The course of 

 study at even such a school as this, could not, how- 

 ever, be supposed to finish a scientific education 

 for the farm, only as the studies of the law school 

 are said to complete a law education. It does, in 

 each case, complete the systematic pursuit of the 

 study which is intended for an initiation into the 

 business, by a knowledge of its principles. But 

 the school, and the only thorough one, is business, 

 and the time is the whole of life after the facilities 

 have attained their maturity. 



Some persons look with much favor on manual- 

 labor schools. So far as practice can be brought 

 to illustrate the studies of the school, it is undoubt- 

 edly of the first importance. In the form of in- 

 struction by lectures especially, upon any subject, 

 illustration by material objects or natural or m&- 



