AGRICULTURAL WANT OF EDUCATION. 69 



description, and the almost incredible circulation of agricultural 

 periodicals, which have come into existence within a compara- 

 tively few years. 



Not only have the out-door labors of the farm been rendered 

 much lighter, more agreeable and more profitable by these 

 modern betterments and inventions, but the household duties 

 of the farmer's wife and daughters have been greatly diminished 

 both in number and severity. The quiet enjoyment of domestic 

 life is now possible, even upon large farms, since the rude hired 

 men of the olden times are mostly replaced by the sleek horses 

 which perform their work. The milk train, the cheese factory, 

 the machines for washing and wringing, churning and sweeping, 

 sewing and knitting, and a thousand other improvements lighten 

 their responsibilities, lessen their labors and shorten their hours 

 of toil. 



While it is thus encouraging to review the history of our 

 agriculture, it is evident that much remains to be accomplished 

 before our system of farming as actually practised will derive 

 the benefit it ought from the best knowledge of the present day, 

 and the farmers as a class have that degree of intelligence and 

 skill which is most desirable. 



We are assured on good authority that the soil of the United 

 States has been devastated and impoverished by our past agri- 

 cultural operations to the extent of more than 11,000,000,000, 

 and that the loss from poor cultivation of crops — from what 

 Henry Ward Beecher styles the horizontal, in distinction from 

 the vertical method of farming — in the year 1869 was not less 

 than $200,000,000. It is also undoubtedly true that the actual 

 waste of fertilizers from want of proper shelter and care 

 amounted in the aggregate to many millions of dollars. Even 

 in Massachusetts there are probably 75,000 barns to-day without 

 cellars or other suitable means for saving the more valuable 

 portion of animal excrement. 



It may be safely asserted that money wisely applied to the 

 advancement of agriculture is most profitably invested. When 

 Henry Colman was occupied, from 1836 to 1840, as commis- 

 sioner in making an agricultural survey of this State, there 

 were many even among the farmers who regarded his work of 

 little if any value, and it was finally suspended before its com- 

 pletion for want of an appropriation from the legislature. In 



