184 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Now, my friends, it is to put this business of farming beyond 

 debate that we have faith in the Agricultural College. I have 

 not the slightest doubt that definite rules for agriculture may 

 be laid down there, and will be, so that we shall all understand 

 them, appreciate them, accept them, and be governed by them, 

 as our guides in this great business. 



I know perfectly well that you will turn about and say, some 

 of you, that the knowledge you will get there is no better than 

 the knowledge you have got heretofore from your practice on 

 the farm, and from the records that have gone into your Trans- 

 actions. But suppose, my friends, that this college had been 

 planted there' fifty years ago ; suppose that the agricultural lit- 

 erature which had been printed in this Commonwealth, instead 

 of having been disseminated broadcast by the societies them- 

 selves, or printed in the crude forms in which it comes from 

 us, — I say from us, because it is a matter of experiment and 

 investigation with us still, — had been sent to an agricultural 

 board of scientific investigators, who would have analyzed it, 

 and tabulated it, and experimented upon it, and drawn rules 

 from it, and then sent it out ; suppose, I say, that this had been 

 done, should we not have been better off to-day ? Would you 

 not be a little wiser in regard to the best methods of culture ? 

 Do you not think we should have known a little more than we 

 now pretend to know about the best mode of feeding cattle and 

 the best modes of breeding them ? And do you not think that 

 somehow or other we should have been able to come together 

 here, and instead of disputing, have added to the amount of 

 each other's knowledge ? It does seem to me so. And when 

 I learned that an agricultural college was to be established here, 

 my first thought was, " Let the agricultural literature of this 

 Commonwealth flow into that college first, and then flow out 

 again for the enriching of the people." I tell you, my friends, 

 that that institution should be the centre of the agricultural in- 

 formation of this State ; and if a man has made a good experi- 

 ment in cultivation, or in the breeding of cattle, if he has 

 learned a new law with regard to fruit-trees, if he has by ob- 

 servation learned a new fact with regard to insects destructive 

 to vegetation, let him send it there for analysis and investiga- 

 tion, and before he knows it, some intelligent professor will have 

 drawn a law from it which will guide him in his future business 



