SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 221 



heretofore, been chiefly sharpened in the progress of his mate- 

 rial civihzation. Moreover, an understanding of the laws of 

 nature must be embodied in the canon of the sciences before 

 effective application of them may be made in the industrial arts. 

 The processes of vegetable and animal production are largely 

 biological, and biology is the youngest of the sciences. But, 

 delayed as has necessarily been the really scientific practice of 

 agriculture, its day has come at last, inciting to the highest order 

 of intellectual endeavor and holding promise of marvelous fruits. 

 Science, in appropriate form, now stands ready to serve the pur- 

 poses of the husbandman and has demonstrated the ability so to 

 do in abounding measure. 



The congratulations offered for the South today spring alike 

 from admiration and from gratitude. The records of the years 

 immediately preceding the founding of this institution show 

 that many earnest and patriotic men, in many of the states, 

 touched with the spirit of scientific inquiry then practically new- 

 born, and dimly conscious of the need for scientific training in 

 education for and fruitful employment in the industry of agri- 

 culture, had striven blindly, in many diverse endeavors to relate 

 properly the education of the children and the avocation of the 

 people to the scientific spirit of the times. For the most part 

 these endeavors were faulty in conception; in most they were 

 inconsequent and vain. Provisions for teaching and applying 

 the body of natural science then known for the improvement of 

 agricultural practice had not, indeed, infrequently been made. 

 In my own state, for instance — and I say it to her honor — three 

 years before the founding of this College, a considerable dona- 

 tion (the largest, I believe, then of record) had been made by a 

 private citizen toward the establishment of a chair of agricultural 

 chemistry in the university of the state. Similar and sporadic 

 endeavors — in what was, at least, a right direction — to quicken 

 the art of the husbandman by an understanding of the nature 

 with which he dealt were, however, far too few and inade- 



