ADDRESS 



ON THE 



ECONOMY OF SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 



BY REV. W. CLIFT. 



Mr. President, and Gentlemeit : 



Conducting your farm operations, in the communities that clus- 

 ter around this seat of learning, and gathering here annually for the 

 display of the products of your industry, assembled on this hill of 

 science as a society of cultivators, the place and the occasion shall 

 furnish the theme of our thoughts. For long ages, the farm and the 

 college have been too widely separated. The farm has sent its most 

 precious products hither, its noblest sons, but no reciprocal influence 

 ever went back from the college to the old homestead. The treasures 

 of science gathered here, enriched not the soil there. It w^as only as 

 the sons took a final leave of the farm, as a home and a means of 

 subsistence, that they sought the generous culture and the thorough 

 discipline of the schools of science. The light gathered here illumed 

 other professions and callings. At the homestead they learned noth- 

 ing new of the soil or of its products. The streams, that flowed out 

 hence, made glad every other spot, but the farm. Science gave the 

 artizan, not only new methods of working, but new materials to work 

 with. He now reaches results, in a day, that once could not be 

 reached, in years. The home of the artizan, the merchant, and the 

 professional man looks tasteful and thriving ; while the old home- 

 stead every where shows signs of decay. There, on the farm, where 

 economy most concerns every individual, it has been most lost sight 

 of, and we are met here to-day, Avith the strange fact, that there has 



