AGRICULTURAL WANT OF EDUCATION. 67 



to appreciate the importance of professional or scientific educa- 

 tion for their sons, and feel far less respect than they ought for 

 their business. Washington declared this to be " the most 

 useful, the most healthy and the most noble occupation of 

 man," and followed it, so far as his public duties would allow, 

 with energy and ability. Yet J;here are multitudes on our 

 farms, who will make far greater sacrifices to send their sons to 

 a classical college, or establish them in some branch of trade or 

 manufacture, than they will to prepare them in the best manner 

 to become influential and prosperous in the profession of their 

 fathers. 



A celebrated painter having been asked with what he mixed 

 his colors to render them so perfect, is said to have answered, 

 " brains." The most difficult and most complicated of the arts 

 also requires brains in him who would master and improve it. 

 Accordingly we find agriculture most wisely and properly con- 

 ducted where nature is not too lavish of her favors, but where 

 the circumstances of soil and climate compel men to the exer- 

 cise of forethought and diligence. In favorable situations 

 within the topics the support of a family requires an exceed- 

 ingly small amount of labor and skill. Clothing is almost a 

 superfluity, and food springs from the earth in constant and 

 luxuriant profusion. Thus the plantain, which is the staff of 

 life in some equatorial regions, yields one hundred and thirty- 

 three times as much food to the acre as the wheat plant, and 

 needs scarcely any cultivation or care. It is only necessary to 

 renew the plantation once in twenty years, so that the principal 

 labor consists in picking the fruit, which grows within thirty 

 feet of the ground. The plantain is nutritious and healthful in 

 a great variety of forms, and is eaten both ripe and unripe, 

 cooked and uncooked, and in the dry as well as the fresh state. 

 The cocoa-nut, date and sago palms furnish food, drink and 

 clothing, almost as readily as the plantain does food. 



How unlike this is the agriculture of Massachusetts, with her 

 rough and sterile soil and her severe climate, demanding a con- 

 stant and vigorous struggle with both the burning heat of sum- 

 mer and the icy blasts of winter ! With anxious care the 

 farmer must provide, during the few brief months when there 

 are no frosts, for the maintenance and shelter of his family and 

 his domestic animals during half the year when no food of any 



