80 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and colleges for the diffusion of knowledge, but almost no 

 institutions which seek to advance and increase knowledge. 

 There is no university as yet, in that sense of the word — an 

 institution to stimulate and aid original investigation and re- 

 search. The conception of a university, and of the income 

 necessary to sustain one, has hardly yet entered into the 

 minds of our people. Harvard College was fostered by the 

 State for two centuries, but for the last half century has de- 

 pended chiefly upon the aid of individuals. For a dozen years 

 past its endowments have been increased at the rate of about 

 one hundred thousand dollars per annum. But these donations 

 have usually been given on condition that the income of them 

 should be applied to certain specified objects, while for the 

 real advancement of the university she ought to have several 

 hundred thousands of income, and that untrammelled, so as to 

 be applied according to the necessities of the hour. 



What the farmers of New England need is an agricultural 

 college in close proximity to and connection with a real uni- 

 versity ; the college having a full corps of men of ability among 

 its instructors, and the university including among its professors 

 chemists, botanists, zoologists, and proficients in other physical 

 sciences, of the highest genius and highest attainment. We 

 ought not to be satisfied with less. Tliat Christian magistrate 

 and patriot, John Albion Andrew, whose memory is so fragrant 

 that it is always a pleasure to mention his name, made an 

 appeal, in his message of January, 1863, translated and quoted 

 with approval in both France and Germany — an appeal for two 

 millions of untrammelled additional endowment to Harvard, 

 and for the purchase of the life-interest in the Busscy Farm, 

 that by this endowment and purchase, and by the Congressional 

 grant, we might have an agricultural college in connection with 

 a university, and both worthy of the State and of the memory 

 of the fathers. The legislature, undoubtedly for wise reasons, 

 did not respond, and located the college founded by Congress 

 near Amherst. But the farmers of New England should not 

 suffer the good seed, sown more than five years ago by Governor 

 Andrew, to perisli. 



What is needed is not an institution in which a hundred or 

 five hundred farmers' sons may learn the mere art of farming, 

 which they might have learned at home, or add to it a little 



