172 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



the Ionian Islands. There is hardly anything done in the Old 

 World, in the way of agricultural labor, in which the mind 

 takes part. Here, I see, on the contrary, that what would else- 

 where be merely manual labor is intellectual labor combined 

 with handwork, and in this I see the chance of progress. 



The first thing to be done is, to endow all these institutions of 

 learning on an entirely different scale from that on which they 

 have been endowed heretofore. This war has taught us one 

 great lesson ; and I hope its influence will be extended to every- 

 thing which is done for public education. It has taught us that 

 great things cannot be done with small means ; that a niggardly 

 expenditure will not bring about great results ; and if we would 

 have universities that can compete with those time-honored 

 institutions of the Old World, they must be better endowed 

 than they are now ; and those who are devoting their lives to 

 public education must be at least as well paid as a clerk in a 

 counting-house. The professors in Cambridge now receive 

 meaner salaries than men who have none of the attainments 

 necessary for those who occupy such positions. Indeed, it is not 

 just to this class of men, to place them in a position in which 

 they cannot live respectably. And yet they do their work, 

 because it is a work of love ; and only in so far as that work is 

 done as a work of love can it be in any way successful. You 

 may select your brightest man, and give him as high a salary as 

 you please, and you do not make him a professor in that way. 

 Unless he has made himself a professor before by hard study, 

 he is not fit to occupy the place to which he may be appointed, 

 and the salary of which he may pocket every quarter. 



But I have said enough on that subject, and now allow me 

 to turn to my topic, — the origin of the soil in these Northern 

 States. It has been brought down from the high north. It is 

 all of foreign origin. There is hardly any particle of it that has 

 been derived from the disintegration of the rocks on which it 

 lies. There is a difference in this soil from that of most other 

 countries where the soil has been generally derived from the 

 disintegration, decomposition, and comminution of the rocks 

 which form the basis of the country. The origin of that bed of 

 soil which fills the bottoms of the valleys, and which has evi- 

 dently been brought down by currents of water is a different 

 matter ; I speak of that loose soil which covers equally the liills 



