332 [Assembly 



sufficiently comprehended (perhaps) how few rules of this com- 

 plex science are of general application. We have too easily 

 admitted the possibility of finding professors perfectly instructed 

 and scholars properly prepared to profit Ijy their teaching — and 

 above all we have much exaggerated the influence which scholars 

 from agricultural schools can exercise over the general progress 

 of agriculture. 



As to the professors, it cannot be dissembled that unless they 

 have long directed i)ersouaily the working of farms of some im- 

 portance, they cannot have more knowledge of agriculture than 

 that which is analytical and very imperfect. 



In an industry like this, so complex, the instruments and pro- 

 ducts of which are of such a solid nature, the professor ought 

 always to embrace the whole of it while he is treating of its de- 

 tails. He alone who has long learned cultivation can arrive at 

 any hypothesis. Such men are very rare in every country and 

 they are hardly ever to be obtained for schools. The working 

 farmer requires a considerable capital. A well informed one — 

 an owner of the soil who consecrates his activity, intelligence 

 and fortune to it and finds in it an independence, will not re- 

 nounce it to occupy an agricultural professorship, or undertake to 

 oversee an agricultural school. 



And that the scholars of such schools may be usefully pre- 

 pared for the teaching which they may receive, a great number 

 of conditions are necessary and difficult to be found together. 



The foundation, by the illustrious Thiier, of the school of 

 Moeglin, iu 1806, appears to be the first attempt made in Germa- 

 ny, in favor of agricultural instruction. 



Moeglin was at first a private school like that of Roville in 

 France, worked out by Thiier on his private account. The all 

 powerful word of such an able master as he w^as, and a sort of 

 agricultural revolution, favored by the introduction of Merino 

 sheep into northern Europe, gave his^establishment a great repu- 

 tation and fixed the attention of governments. In 1819, thirteen 

 years after its foundation, the|.agricultural school of Moeglin was 

 adopted by the State as a Royal Academy •, the working of it to be 

 at the will of the proprietors, the son and the son-in-law of Von 



