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ture. The plastic, receptive, and inquiring mind also, which is 

 created, or should be, l\y careful mental culture, the mind ready 

 to give and receive, quick to forget all prejudices, and throw 

 over all unfounded notions, has a great work to perform in 

 elevating agriculture to its proper standard, as a useful and 

 ])rofitable employment. Industrious, ingenious and open- 

 minded farmers are what the times demand, and what societies 

 and clubs and colleges create. 



To enlighten the agricultural mind, therefore, and strengthen 

 the agricultural hand, we appeal to our educators and inventors 

 — and we do not appeal in vain. The zeal with which agricul- 

 tural investigation is pursued, and the increasing desire for 

 knowledge manifested everywhere, indicate not only a thorough 

 understanding of the magnitude of the conflict, but a determi- 

 nation also to be victorious in the strife. And this incessant 

 and untiring invention of machinery — what does it all mean, 

 but that the old weapons are unfit for the toil, and have become 

 powerless amidst the difficulties and trials of the present age. 

 As it is, the ingenuity of man exhausts itself for us. The wheel, 

 the pulley, the lever, centrifugal and centripetal forces, every 

 corner and angle are brought into the construction of machin- 

 ery to aid us in subduing a hard and obdurate soil, and in 

 gathering in our crops. In nothing is the profound interest of 

 man in the great art which feeds and clothes him made more 

 manifest, than in his constant endeavors to strengthen the hands 

 of those engaged in it. If you would estimate the true value of 

 all this effort, strike down for a season your societies and clubs, 

 close the doors of your schools and colleges, lay aside the inven- 

 tions of labor-saving machinery, and returning to the scythe, 

 the hand-rake, the flail, and the wooden plow, call upon the 

 East to gather its crops, and upon the West to send its seas of 

 grain to market, and see what answer you would get to the call. 

 So earnest do I consider the demand for agricultural education 

 in the i)opular mind, that I have no fear for the success of all 

 institutions devoted to this purpose. And I cannot doubt that 

 the application of machinery to the cultivation of the soil, will 

 one day become as accurate and effective as it now is to manu- 

 factures and the mechanic arts. I would have agriculture a 

 triumph of skill. Man cannot control the elements, I know : 

 the drought will wither his tender plant, the floods will drown 



