6 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



might affect injuriously the actual practical knowledge which is 

 sought. The State of Massachusetts provides most generously 

 four' Normal Schools in which both sexes are taught " how to 

 teach." From these seminaries issue from year to year intelli- 

 gent young men and young women, the majority of whom go 

 into our agricultural towns, and are employed in teaching the 

 rudiments of an English education. Others assume important 

 stations in schools of higher grade elsewhere. The Board of 

 Education appropriates sums of money for familiar lectures on 

 chemistry and other sciences. I have authority for saying, that 

 it is its wish that the relation of the vegetable economy to agri- 

 culture should be taught those who are to teach again. I look 

 with much expectation to the future for the diffusion of better 

 ideas on this subject through our common schools. Much of 

 my correspondence with friends who are teachers, shows the 

 tendency of the public mind in this direction. We should then 

 insist on studies among primary schools connected with the 

 science of agriculture. • At its very basis lies the science of 

 botany. No science else so refined, elegant, elevating to the 

 mind ; none so delicately suited to the feminine tastes. There 

 is no reason why every boy and girl should not know about the 

 very weeds, which look into their school-house door, as much as 

 about the multiplication table. Is not the structure, composi- 

 tion, uses, economical and artistical, of the wood that is consumed 

 in the stove, as worthy an hour's lesson as that of the rivers of 

 countries scarcely trodden by man ? In some towns the areas 

 of school-houses are set with flowers and ornamental trees ; 

 this is well, provided the arrangement does not abridge the 

 play-ground for athletic and health-inducing sports. 



]>ut the science of botany needs no such botanical gardens for 

 its apparatus ; every dry reed-stalk left by the winter winds, 

 every little weed, every green moss, are book and lesson and 

 apparatus, to a mind hcaltliy and properly instructed how to 

 instruct. You will allow me to iirge this point on your atten- 

 tion, gentlemen, for many of you are members of school com- 

 mittees I do not doubt. Would you wish to induce your sons to 

 settle down near the old family hearth and pursue the noble labor 

 of the farm, do all you can to make the farm the most attractive. 

 See that the teachers you employ can teach something that is 

 connected with the business you love and which you wish 



