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cation he is getting begins and ends with books, and gives 

 no promise of helping to bring grist to the paternal mill 

 by the superior knowledge which he is attaining. If, on 

 the other hand, the boy comes home from time to time 

 with some fresh piece of knowledge which enables him 

 to teach his father something which he did not know 

 before as to the habits and uses of plants, their assimila- 

 tion of their food from the soil, the principles and 

 practice of drainage, the rationale and the various 

 methods of pruning, the diseases of cattle and their 

 treatment, and the hundred other items of knowledge of 

 direct practical utility to him in his calling — he would 

 see it to be to his direct advantage to leave the lad at 

 school until both mind and body were better matured 

 for going to work. 



It does not require demonstrating that the additional 

 knowledge which boys so taught would bring to bear 

 upon agriculture would repay to the state the cost of 

 teaching; but, though much might be said upon this 

 point, the occasion is not altogether suitable- for its 

 treatment more fully. 



As a valuable adjunct to such a system, and one 

 involving no great outlay, our public museum should 

 contain models of all the best known labor-saving imple- 

 ments — of the machinery and appliances used in other 

 countries in the preparation for the market of various 

 vegetable products forming staple commodities. I would 

 instance, among those which could be grown in our 

 midst — the Castor Bean, the Olive, Indigo, Coffee, Jute, 

 Hemp, and Hhea plants. The great stumbling-block in 

 the way of commencing these industries is not to demon- 

 strate that the plant will grow to perfection ; but, when 

 you have produced your fruit, stem, leaf, or root, as the 

 case may be, to know how to set to work to produce the 

 staple commodity in a marketable form economically 

 and with certainty, without wasting time, patience, 

 and money in blundering, through a host of trials, into 

 the right sort of appliances, 



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