MR. gray's address. 1! 



The time has come, we believe, when something must 

 be done to place the business of farming on a better 

 foundation, and now is the time when it can be done 

 with effect; society is yet in the forming state; our 

 institutions are receiving their character, and now, be- 

 fore they become rigid by age, is emphatically the time 

 to lay the deep and broad foundation of future and per- 

 manent prosperity. 



The spirit of the age demands that agriculture should 

 be raised from its fallen condition and placed on a simi- 

 lar basis with other professions. The sterility of our 

 New England soil, and our increasing population, re- 

 quire it especially of us. The interests of our widely 

 extended country, now receiving its character, call for 

 it. Morality and religion command it. 



The responsibility devolves upon those who are the 

 instructors and guides of the rising generation ; those 

 who shape the character and direct the energies of the 

 coming age. It is for us to say whether the intellectual 

 and moral powers which are now developing around us 

 shall be directed to those permanent and useful pursuits 

 which lay at the foundation of civil and religious institu- 

 tions, that furnish the means of national wealth, and ex- 

 ert a favorable influence upon man in all the conditions 

 of his being here; or whether they shall be turned into 

 the chanels of vice and fiction, to be consumed by the 

 fires which should have quickened them into life and 

 strength. 



This leads me to remark in the second place, that in 

 order to secure constant progress and permanent improve- 

 ment in Agriculture, its principles must be made a regular 

 branch of study in an extended course of an English educa- 

 tion."^ It must be introduced into our system of popu- 

 lar instruction. How else can it become di science, unless 

 it is made a special subject of study ? It must be stud- 

 ied as every other art is. It must be made a prominent 

 and indispensable part of an education. It will then 



* See Farmer's Companion; p. 279; or the Address of Mr. Biiel before the 

 Agricultural and Horticultural Societies of New Haven County, Sept. 1839 



