6 



taught in every school, on account of its attractive features and the 

 educational discipline it affords. It occupies, morally and mentally, 

 a far higher rank than chemistry or geology, which treat only of 

 inert matter and are acted upon by external forces, while botany 

 treats of living organisms of complicated structure and wonderful 

 arrangement. 



SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION OF THE PLANTER AND FARMER. 



Considering that the agriculturalist derives his wealth exclusively 

 from the vegetable kingdom, and is, so to speak, the lord and 

 master, who monopolizes its most valuable products, forcing nature 

 by his constant attention and unremitting industry to yield up a 

 hundred-fold the treasures confided to the fertile soil, it is still more 

 strange that the educated planter and farmer should never have be- 

 stowed a moment's reflection upon the marvelous productiveness of 

 the seed he sows broadcast over his land, and should never have in- 

 vestigated the principle of its germination, growth and develop- 

 ment, and examined the structure and the nutritive element of the 

 plants which are the life of his lif .-. and the source of his prosperity. 

 He makes his daily rounds in his fields, watches the progressive 

 advancement of his crops, counts up in his mind what quantity of 

 sugar, cotton, corn, rice, wheat, oats, tobacco, or indigo each acre 

 may yield, considers its actual value in money, but it never occurs 

 to his mind that all these are living, self-supporting, and self-pro- 

 ducing organisms, wh ch God has created not merely for utilitarian 

 purposes to supply the wants of the auimal world, but as manifesta- 

 tions of His goodness and His wisdom, as living monitors to teach 

 man his duty to labor and render himself useful, and to inspire him 

 with an aim higher and nobler than merely to eat and drink aud get 

 rich, but to disenthral his soul from the enslaving materialistic ideas 

 which cling to him ai d make him a mean and groveling creature. 



The planters and farmers constitute in every country the majority 

 of the population, and they are the most useful c ass of society. But 

 by a perversion of human reason they have obtained but little at- 

 tention from grovernments, except as a tax-paying class. We have, 

 however, reason to be proud of our country, for its government has 

 recognized the fact that the stability of free institutions must rest 

 upon an educated and refined yeomanry, and it has consequently 

 granted munificent donations to the States for the establishment of 



