Proceedings of the Fa h mens' Club. ,321 



attained thi'oug-li such spccilied iiistifcutioiis tliat \a not :ilre;i(ly witliiii 

 tlie provinco of nil, and in practice even now with many of our 

 collegiate and academic institutions in several of the States, and, in 

 fact, the effect of the restriction in the act alluded to, has resulted in 

 simply inducing the legislatures of most of the States, to assign the 

 control and avails of the vast tracts of land to any simple institution 

 of scholastic capabilities within the State, already organized, or to be 

 organized with a sign board of ''agricultural department " added to 

 their former list, without any necessary material change of pro- 

 gramme, where previously the general and specific sciences were 

 scholastically taught and demonstrated. 



That agricultural lyradical labor can be efficiently introduced and 

 carried out in our mixed scholastic institutions for this branch only 

 with profit and success, requires but a moment's reflection to see the 

 total fallacy of the attempt, and those specific institutions, when 

 partial labor is required to mitigate the expenses for the scholastic 

 period, as in the case of the Agricultural College attempted to be 

 established at Ovid, Seneca Co., X. Y., and the People's College at 

 Havana, jST. Y., where both now stand glaring monuments of imprac- 

 tibility and total failure, not from the want of either State or indi- 

 vidual endowment and pecuniary encouragement, but the total 

 absence of ada})tability to meet the agricultural educational wants of 

 our country, and the evident folly that it would be on the part of 

 parents to devote their sons to four years separation from home 

 Influences and duties to attain two years scholastic advantage. 



This is the European, pauper feature that has been prominent 

 with such institutions established by land owners for the education 

 of overseers of estates, from the indigent working classes, requiring 

 of those thus scholastically educated to work out a portion of the 

 expenses, consequently doubling the time required to reach the same 

 proflciency, and without the ability for experimental demonstration 

 within expenses, and it is to the American youth and farmer the 

 objectional, and hence impractical, feature of all of the proposed 

 systems of so-called agricultural institutions heretotbre presented. 



I therefore repeat that agricultural education, beyond that of the 

 American farmer's h(»me ]>ractical influences, must be tlirougli ]tublie 

 institutions conducted and managed by the skilled labor of those who 

 have passed the scholastic period proper, and entered upon that of 

 the ^>r(2c2!/c'aZ and demonstrative^ and which I insist can and may 



[Inst.] 21 



