18 HAMPSHIRE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



the difference between the clean, smooth, small boned, beautifully 

 formed, quiet and easily fatted Suffolk pig ; and the long, pike-nosed, 

 roached-backed, porcupine grunter, continually eating and squealing, 

 but like Pharaoh's lean kine, never full ? And why may not all of 

 the swine in Massachusetts be of the fomaer class ? If they were, 

 their worth would be increased twenty per cent, not to speak of the 

 great saving in preparation for the market. In the fattening and growth 

 of animals, most cultivators have noticed that cereal grains fit their cat- 

 tle for the market sooner than the esculent ; or that one kind of grain 

 produces this result more readily than others. Nay, more, certain 

 grains by one art of cultivation, will produce these results more ef- 

 fectually, than the same grain by another art. 



Scientific education explains such facts. It teaches that the more 

 oil food contains, the more fat will it produce ; the more phosphate, 

 the better it is suited to the gTOwth of bone and muscle. This the 

 fowls of the air understand. An English cultivator had two fields of 

 wheat side by side, and to human appearance equally luxuriant and 

 attractive, but the sagacious birds left the one which was fertilized 

 with barn-yard manure, and destroyed the other which had been fed 

 with gviano. Why? Because it contained higher phosphated farin- 

 aceous matter. What instinct teaches the bird, education should 

 teach the farmer ; for that which rendered his crop more attractive to 

 the bird, made it also more profitable for his own bread, and for the 

 purpose of the baker. 



But time forbids us to multiply illustrations of the farmer's need 

 of a professional education. Give him this, put into his hand the 

 means of knowledge, and by an economy of time and mental energy, 

 his course will be onward and upward, towards that proud eminence 

 which he ever ought to occupy. Give him this, and our most enter- 

 prising young men will no longer forsake the home of their childhood 

 to seek their fortune in the city, and in the end to be driven back like 

 Lot by the fiery storm that oft infests the place, to the country in 

 poverty and disgrace. Give him this, and you turn the tide of emi- 

 gration from the auriferous mines of California, to the more hopeful 

 " diggins" of our native soil. 



But where shall he obtain such education ? We have no agricul- 

 tural institutions, though they abound in other countries. It ap- 

 pears from the recent report of a distinguished member of your Soci- 



