38 NEW HAMPSHIRE AGRICULTURE. 



While your speaker yields to no one in high appreciation of 

 the value of agricultural science, he has been led by personal 

 experience and observation to emphasize the importance of 

 knowing how to use it. Theory and practice must go hand in 

 hand. Why, my dear brother farmers, we need art as well as 

 science in our business. 



I have sometimes thought that our agricultural institutions 

 gave too much attention to the science and too little to the prac- 

 tice of farming. Particularly has this idea been impressed 

 upon my mind when I have seen a great farm, which some- 

 times sold hay, obliged to buy it, on account of the lack of a 

 practical remembrance of the productive capacities of its soils, 

 on the part of its scientific manager. And still deeper has 

 sunk the impress, when I have learned that the ensilage on an 

 important farm had been partially spoiled because its scientific 

 overseer had refused to have it cut before a magical 25th day 

 of September, notwithstanding it was, long before that day, 

 drying up to its injury. 



Our chairman, Mr. Humphrey, is preeminently a practical 

 man, and I have imagined that if some confident, young 

 graduate, fresh from a great agricultural college outside of 

 New Hampshire, with his head crammed with ill-digested, 

 rural science, but empty of all skill in the practical use of it, 

 were to apply to him for the position of manager of his farm, 

 the interview might be, possibly, something like this : 



Graduate. — " Mr. Humphrey, inasmuch as you have be- 

 come too old to work, it has occurred to me that you needed a 

 foreman on your farm, and that lam the man you need." (He 

 has rubbed our chairman's fur the wrong way.) 



Mr. H. — " It has occurred to you ? A most wonderful oc- 

 currence ! It is true that I no longer boast of extreme youth ; 

 for I am fifty years old and a trifle over ; as is also Mr. Glad- 

 stone, and Prince Bismarck, and Senator Morrill of Vermont, 

 but none of us think that we are past doing something. 

 However, I do want a foreman, and I'll hire you if there is a 

 fair probability that your ' occurrence ' will materialize to my 

 advantage. What are your qualifications?" 



Graduate. — " There is my diploma, read it for yourself! 



