H. K. OLIVER'S ADDRESS. 569 



the parable of Christ. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear, 

 and let him learn. 



But what is the proper ground, and where is it on your farm, 

 Mr. Jones, — where is it on yours, Mr. Stebbins, — where is it 

 on yours, Mr. Thompson ? I dare say you can tell me. But 

 if you had bought your farms yesterday, and had never heard 

 nor known anything about their peculiarities of soil, nor any- 

 thing about the position and characteristics of the various lots 

 suitable for the various agricultural products you propose to 

 cultivate ; could you tell me then, without inquiry, without 

 examination, without reflection ? Now these very matters of 

 inquiry, examination and reflection, are elements, and very 

 essential elements, of agricultural education. And he who 

 instructs you in what you must know in these premises, before 

 you can take the first safe step, is, for the time being, your 

 agricultural schoolmaster, and you are his pupil, and are in 

 the " pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," diliiculties which 

 you would not have to encounter, had you been previously so 

 properly educated, as that you could, by your own personal 

 examination of the various localities on your newly purchased 

 lands, judge and decide for yourself, in what part of them, 

 were the soils adapted for the largest yield from the crops you 

 propose to put in. Or, if you designed to raise large crops of 

 certain single agricultural commodities, decide before pur- 

 chase, whether any particular farm in the market, — or whether 

 the soil of the County or of the State, were suitable for your 

 purpose. 



Again, having a superior agricultural education, you may 

 easily decide, if you find a farm, which for satisfactory cause 

 of locality and neighborhood, you would desire to purchase, 

 whether it lack the elements, any, or all, necessary to the ob- 

 ject you have in view, and wlicther it can be made to receive 

 them, and so be brought into the right condition. I have read, 

 somewhere, an account of the purchase of a farm, by the Hon« 

 Reverdy Johnson, — near Baltimore, — the soil of which was 

 reduced to the meanest condition of impoverishment. The last 

 crop of corn raised upon it, yielded the infinitessimal quantity 

 of one peck to the acre. Not knowing what to do, nor getting 

 from the agriculturists about the neighborhood, anything 

 more reliable than guess-counsel, he applied to a chemist, — not 

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