202 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



cept of the poet, in ornamental matters ; and, in what are called 

 more useful ones, there is no safer rule. Let us treat our cattle 

 as well as we can, lodge them comfortably, feed them gener- 

 ously, with their natural sustenance, keep them neat, avoid 

 undue exposure, and govern them in a spirit of kindness and 

 good humor, and we shall leave little foot-hold for disease, and 

 few occasions for the science of the cattle doctor. 



I have thus spoken very briefly of a few of the difficulties 

 with which our farmers are called to struggle. Of many oth- 

 ers I have not time to speak, however slightly, I shall men- 

 tion only one more obstacle to agricultural improvement, not 

 peculiar to us, but existing, with very few exceptions, in all 

 countries with which we are acquainted ; and this is the fact, 

 that instruction in the elements of agriculture makes no part of 

 our systems of early education. I do not mean to claim for 

 this science a leading place in those systems. I am far from 

 wishing, for instance, to give it that predominance, which our 

 highest seminaries have united in assigning, and most wisely, 

 in my humble judgment, to the classics and the exact sciences. 

 To invigorate and discipline the intellect is of as much mo- 

 ment, as to store the memory. We are not lightly to disparage 

 those systems of regular education, which, it is apprehended, 

 have most clearly proved their merits by their fruits, and which 

 have found no warmer friends, or more liberal benefactors, than 

 among men, whose intellectual, like tlieir material wealth, has 

 been gained with scarce any instruction or assistance from with- 

 out, by their own vigorous capacities and constant industry. 

 But the degree of instruction in the great principles of agricul- 

 ture, which I am recommending, requires no such long course 

 of study. It might be given in a series of lectures, which could 

 easily be composed and delivered in a single summer, by any 

 one, possessing, in any considerable degree, that combination of 

 genius, of easy and elegant composition, and of practical 

 knowledge of agriculture, so conspicuous in Jefferson, in Pick- 

 ering, and in Lowell, to say nothing of other writers, among 

 the living or the departed. Such a course has been actually 

 given in Edinburgh, by Prof. Low, whose work on that subject, 

 in a single volume, combines more of the desirable qualities of 



