Miscellaneous Intelligence. 295 



purchase their experience at great cost. Why should not all these 

 start where their predecessors ended, and not where they began ? Ed- 

 ucation can enable them to do so. The application of science to the 

 useful arts has changed, in the last half century, the condition and re- 

 lations of the world. It seems to me that we have been somewhat neg- 

 lectful in the cultivation and encouragement of the scientific portion of 

 our national economy. 



"Our country is rapidly increasing in population and wealth, and is 

 probably destined in another quarter of a century to contain nearly as 

 many inhabitants as now exist in France and England together. 



" We have already in the United States a large body of young men 

 who have received a classical education, many of whom find it difficult 

 to obtain a livelihood in what are termed the learned professions. I 

 believe the time has arrived when we should make an effort to diversify 

 the occupations of our people, and develop more fully their strong 

 mental and physical resources, throughout the Union. We have, per- 

 haps, stronger motives in New England than in any other part of our 

 country, to encourage scientific pursuits, from the fact that we must 

 hereafter look for our main support to the pursuit of commerce, manu- 

 factures, and the mechanic arts ; to which it becomes our duty, in my 

 humble judgment, to make all the appliances of science within our 

 power. We inherit, and are forced to cultivate a sterile soil ; and 

 what nature has denied, should be as far as possible supplied by art. 

 We must make better farmers, through the application of chemical and 

 agricultural science. 



* We need, then, a school, not for boys, but for young men whose 

 ea rly education is completed, either in college or elsewhere, and who 

 in *end to enter upon an active life as engineers or chemists, or in gen- 

 era U as men of science, applying their attainments to practical pur- 

 poses; where they may learn what has been done at other times and 

 ln other countries; and may acquire habits of investigation and reflec- 

 ll °n, with an aptitude for observing and describing. 



"I have thought that the three great practical branches to which a 

 ^emific education is to be applied amongst us, are, 1st, Engineering; 

 2d > Mining, in its extended sense, including meteorology; 3d, the in- 

 jection and manufacture of machinery. These must be deemed kin- 

 dre d branches, starting from the same point, depending in many re- 

 acts on the same principles, and gradually diverging to their more 

 y*ial applications. Mathematics, especially in their application to 

 J he construction and combination of machinery, and chemistry, the 

 Ration of knowledge and an all-important study for the mining en- 

 f e *r, and the key to the processes by which the rude ore becomes 

 the tenacious and ductile metal. Geology, mineralogy, and the other 

 fences, investigating the properties and uses of materials employed in 

 th u e a rts, carpentry, masonry, architecture and drawing, are all studies 

 whl <* should be pursued to a greater or less extent in one or all of 



ine se principal divisions. , . .. . 



■ To establish such a school as I have endeavored to describe in con- 

 action with the University, and under the care and general guidance 

 *"* government, requires buildings with suitable lecture-rooms and 

 Philosophical apparatus, with models and plans, and a place for their 



Qe P°sit and safe keeping, together with a Cabinet, where every de- 



