36 MR. braman's address. 



teach any more than the mere riidimental and general parts of 

 the science, from meagre text books, prepared for the purpose, 

 without the aids of experiment and practice which will be 

 furnished by the proposed schools, and are of such vast im- 

 portance, to complete the preparation of those who are destined 

 to the employment of husbandry. The system of common 

 schools must undergo a complete revolution, and become very 

 different from what it is now, or will probably become within 

 any period of reasonable computation, before it will meet the 

 exigency of the case and satisfy the demands of agricultural 

 education. There can scarcely be conceived anything more 

 impracticable and visionary than the projects of some who pro- 

 pose to employ our present system of free schools, as an instru- 

 ment to diffuse the necessary degree of agricultural science 

 among the people. They might as well be metamorphosed 

 into colleges and universities, into schools of law, medicine or 

 theology, to teach the whole circle of the sciences and prepare 

 young men for the three professions, as to take the place of 

 those agricultural seminaries, for which there is such an im- 

 perative call in the community. 



The proposed schools offer the following advantages : 

 1. The teachers will be men exclusively devoted to inves- 

 tigations connected with an improved state of cultivation. 

 We have few or none of this description among us. We have 

 learned professors of chemistry, mineralogy, botany, whose 

 profound researches into sciences which it is their business to 

 illustrate, have been of inestimable advantage to the concerns 

 of agriculture. But if we could have gentlemen of equal in- 

 tellectual character and attainment, placed in situations whose 

 duties require them to pursue the study of these sciences, with 

 reference to the cultivation of the soil, they would contribute 

 in a much greater degree to the improvement to which the pres- 

 ent occasion is devoied. 



There is, it is true, great complaint that the recommenda- 

 tions and theories of scientific men, are frequently of no val- 

 ue to the farmer, because they will not stand the test of ex- 

 periment ; and so practical agriculture, as it is called, is set in- 

 finitely above the speculations of learned theorists. 



