No. 4.] INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 25 



there is nothing of that orderly sequence in the progress of 

 the instruction which has made the classical education, and 

 in some degree the scientific education, a process command- 

 ing respect by the intellectual development it inevitably 

 implies. 



I am anxious to make this clear, even at the risk of some 

 repetition. Here are sixty so-called agricultural colleges, 

 or thereabout, each attempting to give as complete instruc- 

 tion in agriculture as is possible. And I suppose every one 

 of them has to withstand the diverse strains of which I spoke 

 at the outset. On the one hand the inertia of the sentiment 

 which sneers at scientific farming ; and on the other hand the 

 strain of the foolish impatience of those who cannot under- 

 stand that until agriculture is reduced to a science it cannot 

 be tauo-ht as a science. Reduced to a science agriculture 

 certainly has not been. It involves some smattering of 

 scientific knowledge ; mainly, as has been indicated, of ele- 

 mentary chemistry. But that farmers are able to speak of 

 potash, and phosphoric acid, and nitrogen, and albuminoids, 

 and carbohydrates, hopeful as this is as a promise for the 

 future, is not a demonstration that agriculture itself is even 

 approximating to the exactness of a natural science. It 

 has hardly attempted to use the scientific method of careful 

 and exact observation of facts with reference to large .general- 

 izations. How could it be otherwise? What inducement 

 has there been for men to regard their farming in the light 

 of a scientific possibility ? The patient, painstaking accuracy, 

 the willingness to wait long for apparently meagre results, 

 the disregard of immediate financial return, — such qualities 

 as these, all factors of the scientific spirit, have had little 

 opportunity to exercise themselves in the details of tilling 

 the soil. The wisdom of the national government in estab- 

 lishing experiment stations has begun to aftbrd such an op- 

 portunity, but only the veriest beginning can have been 

 made in seven years. And the agriculturists themselves 

 have hardly, as yet, been willing to unite with these stations 

 in carrying out the work which demands such general co- 

 operation. Until there is a science of agriculture, as there 

 shall be some day, there cannot be any satisfactory teaching 

 of agriculture worthy of a college name or a collegiate 

 degi-ee. And the agricultural colleges may face the facts. 



