€02 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Nov. 



ticed by the delegate of the Board of Agriculture : 

 "In closing this report I wish to call the attention 

 of the Board to a transaction that occurred on the 

 grounds of this Society, near the closing hours of 

 its exhibition. An intoxicated Irishman, in a fit 

 of drunken frenzy, with a dangerous weapon, 

 stabbed two men severely, and, as was feared at 

 the time, fatally. It is a question whether our So- 

 cieties are sufficiently guarded and empowered by 

 legislation to protect themselves from scenes of a 

 similar character." 



Some societies have offered premiums to female 

 equestrians, who show the most skill in riding on 

 horseback. If anything could lend enchantment 

 to the scene, it is a display of this kind, where 

 young lady competitors play the part of a jockey. 

 Can it be supposed that our legislators would ever 

 have made an annual grant to each Society of six 

 hundred dollars, if they could have anticipated 

 that a part of the money would be employed in 

 patronizing the race course ? In one of the slave 

 States 1 noticed on the stand several young ladies, 

 apparently the daughters of planters, who fre- 

 quently bet on the horses, and if the ladies here 

 take the lead in the race, it would not be strange 

 if they took the lead in betting. Now what is the 

 consequence,-' It draws off attention from the 

 great concerns of agriculture, and fixes it on things 

 which are worse than useless, which are pernicious. 

 I object to the race, because it pampers the love 

 of dissipation. It is a dish catered for various ap- 

 petites, and will always find a good market among 

 the rabble. 



Another objection which I have to the manage- 

 ment of the cattle shovt? is, that those who are se- 

 lected to deliver the annual address ai'e generally 

 persons who have no practical acquaintance with 

 farming, and are, therefore, unfit fur the task. 

 Accordingly, some of them have broached the wild- 

 est theories which can be imagined. A few years 

 since, one undertook to advocate the introduction 

 of agriculture as a branch of study in our common 

 schools. At the conclusion of his address, the 

 President remarked that the exhibitions of the day 

 had been the best he had ever witnessed, and in 

 saying this I understood him to allude particular- 

 ly to the address, which had just been delivered. 

 If this be so, ex uno disces omnes, from one j'ou 

 may judge of the rest. I shall quote one or two 

 extracts from this address, and then offer a few 

 comments upon them. 



'•Botany, or the study of plants, grains and veg- 

 etables, should be a prominent study in our com- 

 mon schools, commenced with the alphabet aiul 

 continued to gradaation, so that every boy and 

 girl fourteen years of age can not only tell the 

 growth and food of every grain, and grass, and 

 vegetable, l)ut also what soil, and season, and fer- 

 tilizers, are best for it. Chemistry, also, shoidd be 

 studied from the earliest period to the latest, as we 

 now study arithmetic and geography. It is vast- 

 ly more important/or a person to know the prime 

 gases, than the prime numbers." This is more 

 easily asserted than proved. 



Again, — "Arithmetic, geography and grammar 

 are studied to the neglect of other more important 

 and attractive branches of knowledge. Teachers 

 should be trained in our Normal schools, not in 

 algebra and geometry only or chiefly, but in bot- 

 any, and chemistry, and meteorology." 



The idea, as I understand it, is, that to attain 



any great excellence or efficiency in farming, the 

 common schools must be converted into high 

 schools, and agriculture must be taught there. In 

 my judgment this is far from sound doctrine. The 

 province of the high schools and common schools 

 is distinct and peculiar. The division of labor 

 must be maintained and preserved ; you cannot 

 distract and confuse the mnid by a multiplicity of 

 books and studies, without rendering all instruc- 

 tion faint and ineffectual. 



The idea of a high school has at first something 

 so magnificent about it, that we are apt to imagine 

 from a liberal mode of reasoning ayorito?-/, that it 

 is the grand concentrated essence and source of 

 intellectual light, and that all the minor institu- 

 tions of our primary and common schools are only 

 so many opaque bodies which shine only by reflec- 

 tion. This is so far from being the fact, that the 

 very reverse is true, and if these said high schools 

 sometimes dazzle us by their splendor, it is chiefly 

 owing to the conducting media by which the rays 

 of light are brought to a focus. 



I know not that I can more clearly express the 

 peculiar influence of both the high and common 

 schools upon the intellectual cliaracters of our pop- 

 ulation, than by the force of analogy. I would 

 say, then, that the high schools, like the foolish 

 works of imagination, seem to have been got up 

 for show rather than use ; the common schools, 

 like the argumentative inductions of a practical 

 and perfect philosophy, serve to feed the mind 

 with solid truth, and give us a rule and a guide 

 which we may carry with us into all the business 

 of life, and apply as often as we have occasion to 

 act, to speak, or even think. 



Indeed, there is but little danger of exaggera- 

 tion in dwelling upon the vast importance of popu- 

 lar education ; nor is it at all extravagant to assert 

 that in civilized society a capacity to read, write 

 and cipher seems to second the great endowments 

 of nature by which we are able to speak, to see 

 and hear, and ranks next in importance to them. 



It was said, with truth, by Charles the Twelfth, 

 of Sweden, that he who was ignorant of the arith- 

 metical art was but half a man; but hov/ much 

 more wretched is that man's condition who has 

 not even mastered the simplest elements of lan- 

 guage, and who, from the infirmities of the mind, 

 must be an animal, and bear the burdens of an an- 

 imal all his days. 



We aie apt to undervalue many of our blessings 

 from the fact that they are common, and because 

 we have never realized what it is to be destitute of 

 them. Profound learning was never designed to 

 be the lot of all, no more than wealth and inde- 

 pendence, and if you were to place the external 

 circumstances of every individual upon the same 

 level, in poirit of property or knowledge, and yet 

 suppose them as still ])ossessing the same old 

 money-getting or inquisitive taste, they would not 

 remain so a day, no, not an hour. So. with what is 

 called a high school, although the external advan- 

 tage of books and the means of instruction are in- 

 tended to be distributed equally to all, yet there is 

 nothing mysterious, no magic in the place, which 

 can ever make a blockhead a great genius. 



"Pigmies are pigmies still, though placed on Alps." 



The strange doctrine that the teachings of the 

 alphabet should be intermixed with those of the 

 high school and college, was a fit subject for ani- 



