70 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



is left to protect itself. We have expended nearly 

 three millions in this state to aid in educating al- 

 most exclusively professional and other gentlemen ; 

 but \ve have given nothing exclusively to educate 

 our agriculturists, who constitute the great mass 

 of our population. And yet there is probably no em- 

 ployment in life capable of being more benefited by 

 a professional education (in which a professional ed 

 ucation would conduce more to the public prosperity) 

 than that of managing our farms. A proper knowl- 

 edge of soils, manures, vegetables, and animals ; of 

 the agency of caloric, of moisture, of the atmo- 

 sphere, and of light, in the economy of vegetable and 

 animal growth, is of the greatest use to the' farmer, 

 and yet in what existing school can be acquired this 

 knowledge, during the period of life in which he 

 ought to obtain his practical information t 



All impressions of general reform, to be success- 

 ful, must be first made upon the ductile minds of the 

 young. The old are apt to be too obstinately wed- 

 ded to their juvenile habits and prejudices. Men are 

 prone to grow up in the creeds in which they are 

 early instructed be they Christian, Mohammedan, 

 or pagan be they those of good or bad husbandry. 

 And if our youth are instmcted in the first elements 

 of agriculture, and taught to consider it, what it truly 

 is, an employment calculated, above all others, to 

 promote individual and national prosperity and hap- 

 piness, they will aspire to honour and distinction in 

 its labours ; and will not so generally press to the 

 cities, to the bar and the counter, for the means of 

 gratifying a laudable ambition. Society, too, will 

 reap an abundant reward from the change. \Ve will 

 illustrate this by an historical fact. Ernest, former 

 duke of Saxe Gotha, had his people instructed by 

 compendiums of every kind of useful knowledge, in- 

 cluding music and drawing, that were put into the 

 hands of youth in all the country schools, and which 

 in a few years entirely changed the face of his prin- 



