MILTON P. BRAMAN'S ADDRESS. 547 



different from what it is now, or will probably become within 

 any period of reasonable computation, before it will meet the 

 exigency of the case and satisfy the demands of agricultural 

 education. There can scarcely be conceived anything more 

 impracticable and visionary than the projects of some who pro- 

 pose to employ our present system of free schools, as an instru- 

 ment to diffuse the necessary degree of agricultural science 

 among the people. They might as well be metamorphosed 

 into colleges and universities, into schools of law, medicine or 

 theology, to teach the whole circle of the sciences and prepare 

 young men for the three professions, as to take the place of 

 those agricultural seminaries, for which there is such an im- 

 perative call in the community. 



The proposed schools offer the following advantages : 

 1. The teachers will be men exclusively devoted to inves- 

 tigations connected with an improved state of cultivation. 

 We have few or none of this description among us. We have 

 learned professors of chemistry, mineralogy, botany, whose 

 profound researches into sciences which it is their business to 

 illustrate, have been of inestimable advantage to the concerns 

 of agriculture. But if we could have gentlemen of equal in- 

 tellectual character and attainment, placed in situations whose 

 duties require them to pursue the study of these sciences, with 

 reference to the cultivation of the soil, they would contribute 

 in a much greater degree to the improvement to which the 

 present occasion is devoted. 



There is, it is true, great complaint that the recommenda- 

 tions and theories of scientific men, are frequently of no val- 

 ue to the farmer, because they will not stand the test of ex- 

 periment ; and so practical agriculture, as it is called, is set 

 infinitely above the speculations of learned theorists. 



Now the proposition is to establish schools in which the the- 

 oretical and practical are combined. Every new deduction of 

 scientific research will be subjected to actual experiment, and 

 tested by successful results, before it is patented for the public 

 use and benefit. 



It is also fair to put the question, whether the recommenda- 

 tions of learned men, any oftener fail in experiment; than the 



