TOSITION OF AGRICULTURE. 457 



and active aid towards furthering the great and all-important 

 object of establishing these schools in Massachusetts. United 

 and vigorous action is necessary to accomplish what is desired; 

 and the energetic pioneers who have gone forward in this good 

 work should be promptly sustained by all good citizens. The 

 underbrush of prejudice is to be cut away, the rocks of opposi- 

 tion are to be drilled by reason, blasted by conviction, and re- 

 moved by patriotic public spirit, the yawning chasms of de- 

 spondency to be bridged over by the sturdy tree of knowledge, 

 and the road to success thus made broad and plain, so that 

 this ancient and honorable Commonwealth may go forth in 

 all the pride of conscious strength to the establishment of 

 institutions which are to be for the benefit of the farmers who 

 till her soil, which will adorn her farms with well-stored grana- 

 ries, and make her waste places to blossom like the rose. 



Truly a great work is yet to be accomplished in bringing 

 about the application of science to agriculture ; and in the 

 judgment of wise men who have bestowed much thought upon 

 the subject, and garnered up much valuable experience by the 

 devotion of many hours of severe labor and the expenditure of 

 much money, this great work can be best accomplished by the 

 establishment of public schools for agricultural education. 

 That this enterprise is not a hopeless one is demonstrated to 

 some extent by the action of the last Legislature in the appro- 

 priation of a portion of the State lands at the Westboro' Re- 

 form School to the experimental uses of scientific agriculture, 

 and the assignment of the sum of six thousand dollars from the 

 State treasury to the same object — the whole to be under the 

 direction of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. The aid 

 thus given by the State towards this object is small indeed 

 compared with the magnitude of the object and the importance 

 of the results sought for to the wealth and prosperity of the 

 State. But still it is a beginning in the right direction, and 

 therefore a cause of hope to the advocates of agricultural edu- 

 cation; and if the aid thus furnished by the State be wisely 

 improved, as we cannot doubt that it will be, under the super- 

 vision of the Stafn Board of Agriculture, the successful results 

 which even this limited effort in behalf of scientific cultivation 

 will produce will have a powerful effect in demonstrating the 



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