32 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



our timber, the improvement of the domesticated animals, the 

 adaptation of manures and soils to crops, and you will see that 

 there cannot be too great an amount of skill and learning 

 brought to bear upon agriculture, and that we can scarcely 

 estimate too highly the benefits that may arise from an insti- 

 tution which shall directly interest the most learned and tal- 

 ented men of the country in this pursuit. 



We can attain these benefits for the farmers of New England 

 and of the world only by strenuous and earnest effort We 

 must raise an endowment of three or four millions for Harvard 

 University, or of five or six millions for Yale, or of seven or 

 eight millions for Amherst. Cambridge is the most favorable 

 place in wliich to found a high university and to connect with 

 it an agricultural college of a high order. It will cost less in 

 every way, because, by means of the present endowment of 

 Harvard and of the Bussey Institution, the best beginning has 

 already been made. Would that the farmers of New England 

 and of the United States might perceive that agriculture is 

 among the highest and most difdcult of the useful arts ; that it 

 can be brought to its perfection only by calling in all the other 

 useful arts and all the sciences as tributaries and aids ; by giving 

 to a few men devoted to its pursuit the highest possible training, 

 such as can be obtained only in an agricultural college of the 

 highest order, connected with a university of the highest order ; 

 and that this institution must, for the benefit of American agri- 

 culture, be situated in America, in our climate, upon our soil, 

 dealing with American varieties of plants and animals, and cog- 

 nizant of the needs of American society and American markets. 

 Then we might hope that a generous zeal would be aroused in 

 all classes of men to establish such an institution in our coun- 

 try ; and if it could be sliown that it could be established more 

 speedily, more firmly, and with more prospect both of immediate 

 and of future success, in some other way than by taking as a 

 starling nucleus Harvard College, with its endowments, its 

 buildings, its library, its Scientific and Mining Schools, its 

 Herbarium and Botanic Garden, its Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, its incipient Bussey Institution, and its proximity to 

 the scientific societies, museums and libraries of Boston, no 

 pride of mine in my Alma Mater would lead me to say another 

 word in favor of establishing a university and an agricultural 

 college at Cambridge. 



