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696 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



no farmer deny his sons the advantage of at least one paper, 

 which is either wholly or in part devoted to this subject. 



Agricultural societies have also contributed largely to the 

 progress and diffusion of agricultural information. By their 

 exhibitions and reports and other instrumentalities, they have 

 scattered broadcast the seeds of knowledge, and propelled on, 

 the car of improvement. 



But neither these, or any other agents, now in operation, are 

 deemed sufficient for all that is desirable. We have materials, 

 but they need system, and encouragement. Where shall the 

 farmer look for this, but to the Commonwealth, whose right 

 arm is significantly upheld in her insignia for the protection of 

 all classes of her sons? We have no such agricultural schools 

 as abound in other countries. It appears from the report of 

 President Hitchcock, one of the agricultural commissioners of 

 Massachusetts, that there are in Europe three hundred and 

 fifty-two such institutions, many of which he visited, and all 

 of which exert a powerful and salutary influence, by the diffu- 

 sion of intelligence, and by the improvement of this time- 

 honored art. In republican France, there are seventy-five un- 

 der government patronage. To one of these she made appro- 

 priations in 1849 of half a million of dollars. Another has 

 already graduated six hundred well-educated agriculturists, who 

 immediately found honorable and lucrative situations at the 

 head of their professions. Monarchical Russia has sixty-eight 

 of these schools, some of which are of a high order, and su- 

 perior to those in other lands. Ireland, down-trodden, poor 

 and miserable, has sixty-three of various grades, many of them 

 of recent origin, all striving for the resuscitation of her soil and 

 for her restoration to pristine wealth and prowess. The result 

 is certain ; she is destined to rise ; aye, is rising already ; for in 

 the neighborhood of these institutions, where sterility lately 

 abounded, are now highly cultivated fields. One instance 

 shall suffice. At the Glasnevin college, the scholars by request 

 came in from the fields, and recited, in a manner that would 

 have been creditable to any New England college, in those 

 natural sciences upon which their practice depended, and their 

 cultivation evinced their skill in the art. 



