AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 91 



expedients and provisions by which nature increases the pro- 

 ductiveness of the earth. Nor is a great depth of soil, as two, 

 five, ten or twenty feet, any s'ecurity against its ultimate impov- 

 erishment. Only a certain portion is available. It has been 

 found in the case of coal mines which lie at great depths, that 

 they are, for the present, valueless, and we cannot attach much 

 importance to soil that is twenty feet below the surface. Neither 

 cultivation nor vegetation can go beyond a certain depth, and 

 wherever vegetable life exists its elements are required and 

 appropriated. Great depth of soil is desirable, but with our 

 present knowledge and means of culture it furnishes no security 

 against ultimate exhaustion. 



The fact that all soils are exhaustible establishes the necessity 

 for agricultural education, by whose aid the processes of impov- 

 erishment may be limited in number and diminished in force ; 

 and the realization of this fact by the public generally, is the 

 only justification necessary for those who advocate the immedi- 

 ate application of means to the proposed end. 



And, gentlemen, if you will allow a festive day to be marred 

 by a single word of criticism, I feel constrained to say, that a 

 great obstacle to the increased usefulness, further elevation 

 and higher respectability of agriculture, is in the body of far- 

 mers themselves. And I assume this to be so upon the suppo- 

 sition that agriculture is not a cherished pursuit in many 

 farmers' homes ; that the head of tlie family often regards his 

 life of labor upon the land as a necessity from which he would 

 willingly escape ; that he esteems other pursuits as at once less 

 laborious, more profitable and more honorable than his own ; 

 that children, both sons and daughters, under the influence of 

 parents, both father and mother, receive an education at home, 

 whicli neither school, college, nor newspaper can counteract, 

 that leads them to abandon the land for the store, the shop, the 

 warehouse, the professions or the sea. 



The reasonable hope of establishing a successful system of 

 agricultural education is not great where such notions prevail. 



Agriculture is not to attain to true practical dignity by the 

 borrowed lustre that eminent names, ancient and modern, may 

 have lent to it, any more than the earth itself is warmed and 

 made fruitful by the aurora borealis of an autumn night. Our 

 system of public instruction, from the primary school to the 



