320 TuAXSACTrOXS OF THE Am ERIC AX LxSTITUTE. 



common observer, with tliose engai^ing in agricultural pursuits with- 

 out experience or practice. 



That there is no good reason for sucli conclusion, I am not only 

 forced hy my own observation and experience, but all authority upon 

 the subject tends to discard the idea tliat anything short of practical 

 application is efficient in qualifying the individual for an intelligent 

 and successful prosecution of the business. Yet strange as it may 

 seem, agriculture is the only pursuit where it is proposed, both l>y 

 governmental inJfluences and individual practice, to graduate the 

 school hoy at once to the leadership and instructor of the lifelong 

 experienced and practiced devotee to the business. 



That this anomaly in the practice and ideas upon this subject of 

 agricultural education must have some foundation or reason underly- 

 ing it, I cannot for a moment doubt, and that that reason is the fact 

 that all true knowledge in the art lies in the path of exjjerimental 

 investigation led by practical and scientific experience and personal 

 application aided by governmental encouragement and patronage in 

 the direction and through the medium of experimental farms, instead 

 of so-called agricultural colleges, which at best are only adapted to 

 the scholastic education of youth. 



Tliis, in our country at least, is that which agriculture has never 

 received, but what it must have before it can rank as, an established 

 and systematized pursuit, having that exact knowledge so common to 

 other vocations, and this omission has doubtless grown out of a mis- 

 apprehension of the necessities and a mistaken view of the means to 

 supply the needs and wants of a pursuit, which, though lauded by 

 all, is nevertheless regarded as the province of second rate intelli- 

 gences, requiring sufficient physical and mental powers to perform 

 the service of drawers of water and hewers of wood to a class M'hose 

 professional aspirations too often assume to direct and guide in pro- 

 vinces even where they are really and only novices? Hence the pro- 

 visions of the act of Congress donating land to the several States for 

 tlie " benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts " contains the 

 restriction that the income shall forever and only be applied to the 

 endowment, support and maintainance of at least one college in each 

 State where the leading object shall be "such branches of learning as 

 relate to agriculture and the mechanic arts," the State to furnish the 

 buildings, tfec, within a time specified (five years) for "one or more" 

 colleges, or forfeit the appropriation. 



Here let it be observed, there is not a practical or useful idea to be 



