Proceedings of tee Farmers' Club. 319 



masses only by practical demonstration, throuo-li the medimn of 

 experimental farms, conducted by tlie best practical and scientific 

 intelligence combined ; the whole aided and sustained by govern- 

 mental endowment, that the means may be ample for experimental 

 investigation and demonstration, without regard to immediate returns 

 in dollars and cents. It should also be continuous, from generation 

 to generation, that the accumulations of knowledge resulting from 

 the experience of each may be carefully recorded with processes and 

 results. These should also be given annually, or oftener, by intelli- 

 gent reports, to the public in such manner as to reach all interested, 

 and enable them to adopt the useful and practical, and avoid the 

 theoretical or undeveloped visions of empirics. Ilence the appro- 

 priateness of those munificent land grants to the States by Congress. 



Briefly, this is my interpretation of the much agitated and long 

 mooted question of agricultural education ; and I am aware that it 

 is materially different from the commonly received and widely pro- 

 mulgated idea in relation to this all important subject. 



If I am right, then is all else heretofore and at present in prosecu- 

 tion in this whole land — yea, nearly all Europe too — nothing else 

 than scholasiic education ; and, like all rudimental instruction of the 

 kind, by whatever name known, exclusively devoted to the training 

 of youth through their literary and elementary scholastic period. 

 Why call such any more agricultural education, than it is mercantile, 

 legal or mechanical. Do youths graduate from such institutions mer- 

 chants, lawyers, artizans. mechanics, or anything else but as scholas- 

 tically and elementarily educated boys, except for farmers ? No, no 

 such idea has ever been entertained for a moment. A legal educa- 

 tion requires the practical training of the law office and courts ; mer- 

 cantile education that of the sales and counting room ; the mechanic 

 tliat of the shop, and the artisan the studio ; the sailor the deck of 

 the ship ; and the useful engineer, civil or military, the field of j)?'aG- 

 tical application. 



Why, 'then, is it even a supposable case, that a boy may be taken 

 from the farm and scholastieally educated into a practical, scientific 

 farmer, fitted to lead and instruct his fathers at tlie period and under 

 similar educational influences, where all other classes are only 

 regarded as prepared to enter upon the practical attainment of their 

 specific department of knowledge ? and, especially, a department 

 where the novice in practical knowledge is universally more conspic- 

 uous and less successful than any other — as is patent to the most 



