MARSHALL P. WILDER'S ADDRESS. 589 



his special business, raises on five-eighths of an acre, more than 

 three thousand boxes. These he sold by contract for the sea- 

 son, at twenty-five cents per box, or about twelve hundred dol- 

 lars per acre. Who has not heard of Mr. Pell's apples ? He 

 has an orchard of several thousand trees, consisting of two va- 

 rieties, to which he has specially adapted his soil by scientific 

 cultivation, most of which he ships to Liverpool, and receives 

 in return a very large sum. These are not chimeras of the 

 imagination but incontrovertible facts, selected from a multi- 

 tude, all bearing concurrent testimony to the utility of a proper 

 division of labor, and a wise appropriation of soils to the crops 

 for which they are best adapted. In other words, they prove 

 the utility and indispensable necessity of a scientific education 

 of farmers, for all these arts of cultivation depend upon science, 

 and of course progress in them must depend on scientific 

 knowledge. 



But time forbids us to multiply illustrations of the farmer's 

 need of a professional education. Give him this, put into his 

 hand the means of knowledge, and by an economy of time and 

 mental energy, his course will be onward and upward, towards 

 that proud eminence which he ever ought to occupy. Give 

 him this, and our most enterprising young men will no longer 

 forsake the home of their childhood to seek their fortune in the 

 city, and in the end to be driven back like Lot by the fiery 

 storm that oft infests the place, to the country, in poverty and 

 disgrace. Give him this, and you turn the tide of emigration 

 from the auriferous mines of California, to the more hopeful 

 "diggins" of our native soil. 



Agricultural Education. 



[Extract from an Address hy the Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, at the last Fair 

 of the Berkshire Agricultural Society.] 



The remark, that progress is the watchword of the age, is as 

 true as it is common ; many of the useful arts of life having 

 advanced during the present century with a rapidity unparal- 

 leled in the history of the world. 



