178 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



is the application of definite rules to the business of agriculture 

 that we are striving for. 



Now, my friends, I have been more struck since I came to 

 this meeting than I ever was before with the victory which pos- 

 itive science has achieved over the knowledge which we farmers 

 — for I say I have brought it myself — bring to our debates. 

 There have been but two things that have been unquestioned 

 here. One was, the demonstration of the physical economy of 

 the cow, as the source from which your dairy products were 

 drawn, — the natural history of the cow, demonstrated here be- 

 fore you upon scientific principles, under scientific ^rules ; and 

 the other was, the lecture to which we listened last night upon 

 the breeding of fishes, and the introduction, once more, of fishes 

 into our streams. No man here could deny the statements of 

 those two gentlemen, who planted themselves upon definite 

 science. Nobody undertook to deny those diagrams, that I 

 have heard of. Nobody undertook to debate the fact stated by 

 Prof. Agassiz, that when the young trout came out of his egg, 

 he had a bag hanging on his lower side which he must be rid 

 of before he could come to perfection — a bag of sins, perhaps, 

 like that which Christian cast away before he reached the top 

 of the Celestial Mountains. Nobody questioned that ; there 

 was no doubt raised about it. Nobody doubted for a moment 

 that what we were told litre of the great lacteal organization of 

 the cow was true ; it was demonstrated to us. But the instant 

 a speculating, inexperienced but perhaps thoughtful farmer got 

 up here and undertook to say that you must not feed a cow 

 upon corn-meal, what an uproar it made ! And when he told 

 you that it would not do to feed green corn, sown in rows, to 

 your cows, for the purpose of raising milk, there was another 

 row. And what an excitement it created when my distin- 

 guished friend said you must not let your orchards go to grass 

 land ! These questions that relate to practical agriculture are 

 the only questions that we have found open to debate here ; but 

 we have been obliged to surrender, in spite of ourselves, to the 

 positive and definite demonstrations and declarations of scientific 

 men alone. 



Now, gentlemen, the business of agricultural education is to 

 stop this debate, if we can ; to give us some definite rules by 

 which we can carry on our business. The great questions of 



