758 MASS. BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG FARMER. 



BY SIMON BROWN. 



It is a remarkable fact, and one that will be contemplated 

 by posterity with regret, that while young men, destined for 

 other callings and professions in this country, have received 

 early in life, the rudiments of an education expressly adapted 

 to assist them in the successful prosecution of their respective 

 pursuits, the young' farmer has been overlooked in the great 

 scheme of popular education. 



The wise liberality of our government, even from the era of 

 the Pilgrims to the present day, has, it is true, enabled him to 

 derive important advantages from our primary schools ; but 

 from these he has stepped forth upon the world's wide stage, 

 a perfect tyro in everything appertaining to the great calling 

 in which he is to engage. With the lawyer, the minister, and 

 the doctor, the case has been the reverse. In the primary 

 schools and academies of New England, young minds are 

 based on those principles of literature and science which con- 

 stitute the foundation of the professional education they are 

 subsequently to receive in the higher institutions. The great 

 labor of instruction goes regularly on from the first ; it com- 

 mences with the abecedarian, and is consummated by the pro- 

 fessor 



" In those institutions 

 In whose halls are hung invincible armor 

 Of the knights of old." 



But no thought is accorded to the young husbandman. If 

 he can read, write, cipher, tell whether his farm is located in 

 the eastern or western, hemisphere, and ascertain with correct- 

 ness the periods of the rising and setting of the "greater and 

 lesser lights" of heaven, it is deemed sufficient; it is "educa- 

 tion enough " for one, the ignoble nature of whose caljing 

 necessarily associates him with brute beasts, and whose mind 

 is supposed, or assumed, to be elevated but little above the 

 brutes he drives. Now this is not as it should be. In the 

 first place, we enter our protest against this false appreciation 



