No. 151.] 216 



just views of the requirements of agriculture they are both evidently 

 wrong. For it may be asked, if they are wrong, what are right 

 notions? 



In answer we would reply, we have come to this convention to 

 ask of its wisdom an answer to that question, and also of its adjunct. 

 By what mode shall facilities for the attainment of an agricultural 

 education be offered? 



In asking these questions, however, it becomes us to state tbe views 

 at which the association we represent has arrived, after a careful ex- 

 amination of the character and modes by which a professional edu- 

 cation is obtained in other arts and professions, and otherwise. 



In commerce, in mechanics, in engineering, in teaching, in law, 

 in medicine, in theology, it was found to be contemporaneous in- 

 struction in the practice and sciences belonging to each, subsequent 

 to a proper preparative course of elementary and disciplinary edu- 

 cation. 



The application of this universally adopted principle is met at the 

 outset with a difficulty which at first seems insuperable. It exists in 

 difference of circumstances. The future merchants and mechanics 

 are sufficiently numerous in large villages and cities to sustain schools 

 and lectures, upon which they could attend during intervals of re- 

 lease from practical duties. The future divines, while enjoying in- 

 struction at their seminaries, find opportunities to practice at the so- 

 cifd meetings of the pious as well as in the exercise of their schools. 

 The future lawyers, while fulfilling the duties of the office, embrace 

 the exercises of their courts and the fruitful advantages of the hall 

 of justice. The future physicians, gathered at their colleges, collect 

 and study the precepts, principles and experience of their profession, 

 v/hilst they enjoy the clinics of their private instructors or a hospital. 

 The future farmers have no such advantages. Their practical in- 

 struction requires the farm and the farmer. Their theoretic the in- 

 structor in agricultural science. There is no common centre where 

 the expense of this education could be divided among a company of 

 fellow students. 



Upon this view of the difference of circumstances, the plan of 

 gathering a sufficient number for the support of scientific instruction 

 upon a single farm was examined and abandoned, it being supposed 

 upon any ordinary sized farm as insufficient to afford necessary op- 



