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in dairying. If by means of short courses, as winter schools, 

 they can reach the batter and cheese makers, and even the sons 

 and daughters of dairy farmers, well and good. Their chief 

 aim in this line should be to instruct those who will in turn be 

 teachers. County and even township agricultural winter 

 schools, in connection with academies, or maintained separately, 

 have been suggested. I firmly believe that our agricultural 

 colleges are preparing the teachers for such popular schools in 

 some form, and I may not be going too far in predicting that 

 farmers' institutes are awakening the farmers to a point where 

 they will demand and carry out a similar plan. Agriculture in 

 its various branches is too comprehensive to be taken any more 

 than by piece-meal into our country schools. They are already 

 too full of classes, and have all they can do in laying a founda- 

 tion for an English education. Separate dairy schools like the 

 pioneer one recently started by Mr. Lawrence Valentine, at 

 Houghton Farm in New York, may prove to be the way of 

 reaching the masses in the districts devoted especially to dairy- 

 ing, and will for the present, if successful, be training schools to 

 produce more teachers, writers and speakers in this line. Simi- 

 lar schools in Ireland and some parts of Europe have proven that 

 the results show in. a better class of goods reaching the markets 

 where they have been located for a few years. But for sections 

 where mixed farming is practiced dairying will naturally be 

 only one of several things taught in farmers' schools. 



Farmers' institutes for the immediate present have more of 

 promise in them than all other educators. They not only give 

 a great amount of information, but they make a demand for 

 dairy papers and books, farmers' schools, and more institutes. 

 They, and the use of some of the " Hatch" experiment funds, 

 also agricultural colleges, are the things to be pushed now. 

 Popular dairy schools may come in their own time. 



Willet M. Hays. 



