426 MASS. BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



farmers of the State most effectively ? I think we may do it 

 by using, to some extent, the agricultural institutions which 

 exist, — thetown societies and the county societies. As in the 

 common school system, the people have been led to maintain 

 it voluntarily, so, I take it, the agricultural system of education 

 is to be maintained voluntarily in the small communities of the 

 State. You cannot establish any great system, which shall 

 act upon the people directly and exclusively. You may 

 encourage agriculture, but its support must come from them. 



Hold out, then, the inducement to the people to educate 

 themselves, and you will succeed. If you have an institution 

 to educate men to go among the people, you will do something 

 in that way. If you were to adopt the system of employing a 

 certain number of scientific men, as we have employed com- 

 mon school lecturers, you might create an educational feeling 

 which would be efficient. For example, if there are, at this 

 moment, fifty town societies, and if you were to employ a cer- 

 tain number, — perhaps five scientific men, — whose duty it 

 should be, in the summer season, to go where these institutions 

 exist, (and nowhere else, that their establishment may be en- 

 couraged,) to receive and communicate information in relation 

 to manures and crops ; and if, in the winter, it were their duty 

 to give lectures adapted to the wants of these localities, I take 

 it you would do a great deal of good. 



And if your munificence were confined to the towns where 

 these associations exist, lecturers would increase as rapidly as 

 the demand ; and without extraordinary effort, you would intro- 

 duce a system of agricultural education which should reach 

 every young man, give him information, and cause inquiry 

 among the great body of agriculturists. It would be the duty 

 of those individuals' to collect and distribute information, so 

 that you would have a great system of lectures and experi- 

 ments extending over the whole Commonwealth, 



Remarks of William Buckminster, editor of the Massachu- 

 setts Ploughman: — I was surprised to hear the assertion, this 

 afternoon, that we had made no improvement in agriculture for 

 forty or fifty years past. If there is any useful agricultural 

 knowledge in the country, I ask you where it is. It rests with 



