10 



and, if they are as they should be, the veneration and love of, 

 through all vicissitudes and wanderings, from childhood to old 

 age ; and they linger in thought and affection till life closes 

 here to open in the blessed Hereafter. 



The right education of the farmer has reference, then, both 

 to utility and to embellishment, the latter being scarcely less 

 important than the former. " I persuade myself," wrote John 

 Ray, the English naturalist, almost two hundred years ago, 

 " that the bountiful and gracious Author of man's being and 

 faculties and all things else, delights in the beauty of his crea- 

 tion, and is well pleased with the industry of man in adorning 

 the earth with pleasant villages and country-houses, with regu- 

 lar gardens, and orchards, and plantations of all sorts of 

 shrubs, and herbs, and fruits." 



Attention to the general subject of agricultural education is 

 of comparatively recent date. It is not fifty, probably not more 

 than twenty years since any considerable interest had been 

 awakened in it in this country ; although toward the close of 

 the eighteenth and in the first quarter of the present century, 

 several seminaries for agricultural education had been estab- 

 lished in Germany, Switzerland, France and Great Britain. But 

 within the last twenty years, owing very much, no doubt, to 

 the development of the science of chemistry which, with each 

 new discovery, has brought to light some new truth applicable 

 to practical husbandry, the question of providing for the specific 

 education of young men intending to be farmers has taken a 

 deep hold on the public mind of several of the States of the 

 Union. It has enlisted the interest of many of our ablest and 

 most eminent citizens. And, Mr. President, I shall be com- 

 municating no secret to you when I say, that no where in this 

 broad land was the question of furnishing such education agi- 

 tated earlier, or with more ability, pertinacity and effect, than 

 here in the county of Norfolk ! And upon this point as a mat- 

 ter of history, you will pardon me if I dwell a little. 



It is within the memory of not a few present, that in 1848, 

 when our farmers met here in Dedham to organize this Society, 

 that subject was made the prominent point in the address of the 

 orator and the speeches which followed it. Never was there 

 assembled on this continent for a similar purpose a congress 

 composed of more able and renowned men than most of 



