18 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



guish a pick-axe from a grubbing-hoe. What 

 is the result? Entering upon a profession of 

 which he is wholly ignorant, he purchases know- 

 ledge at the expense of many disastrous failures, 

 at all of which his uneducated neighbor turns 

 up his nose, and exclaims, "so much for book 

 laming;" and he is right, because, he means, 

 so much for the want of practical knowledge. 



There is no art, deserving the name, in which 

 the genius and labor of ages has not been col- 

 lected, and there is no art in which what is al- 

 ready known can be acquired, except by an ap- 

 prenticeship of years. Nor is there any art or 

 profession, except that of agriculture, the most 

 important and the most profound of all, in which 

 this principle is not recognised ; even the mer- 

 chant, generally, serves an apprenticeship, as a 

 clerk. Nascitur, non fit, is made to apply to 

 farmers and poets, alone. 



Is not this fact sufficient to account for the 

 relative depression of this noble art % How then 

 shall we elevate it ? We answer by bestowing 

 agricultural educations upon those intended for 

 its pursuit. 



Every profession may be divided into two 

 branches. One consists in a knowledge of the 

 rules to be observed by those engaged in the 

 practice of the profession, the other comprises 

 the course of reflection and observation, by which 

 those practical rules are deduced. In different 

 professions, these two branches are more or less 

 united. Whilst in the art of statesmanship they 

 are intimately and inseparably connected, in 

 many of the mechanic arts they are entirely 

 separated. The iron turner is perfectly ignorant 

 of the rationale of the engine he is building, 

 while Watt was probably unable to fit a screw 

 in the metallic stave his vast genius had origi- 

 nated. The very merchant makes daily use of 

 formulae obtained by the unknown calculations 

 of the mathematician, and in all professions that 

 are not purely mental, a knowledge of results is 

 one thins:, and the rationale by which those de- 

 ductions are obtained is another. Now it seems 

 to us that the advocates of agricultural improve- 

 ment frequently forget this important distinction, 

 and never remember that the operators should 

 be to the theorists, or deducers, as a thousand to 

 one. They would initiate all into the rationale 

 of the rules of his art, this is neither practicable 

 nor desirable, and by grasping at too much, we 

 lose all. We, therefore, desire to see not only a 

 professorship to teach the science of agriculture, 



or rather so much of it as has yet been estab- 

 lished, but what we believe would be infinitely 

 more valuable, the establishment of schools in 

 which the practice of the art may be taught. — 

 If mathematicians have worked out the best 

 curve for a mouldboard, tell your pupil what it 

 is, without troubling him with the calculations 

 by which it has been obtained ; if Liebig has 

 made wonderful discoveries in organic chemis- 

 try, instruct him in the practical results to which 

 they have lead, without burdening him with the 

 scientific theories from which they have been 

 deduced ; and when no practical result is deduci- 

 ble from a theory, no matter how pretty, or how 

 ingenious it may be, bother neither him nor 

 yourself with it. Above all, teach him habits 

 of system and industry, and make him person- 

 ally familiar with the operations of the mecha- 

 nical implements of his profession. This home- 

 ly, plain, and practical information is what is 

 needed by the great mass of our farmers, whilst 

 ; the general object seems to be to stuff thern 

 with science. As well might }'Ou attempt to 

 teach a boy to read, before he had learned his 

 letters. 



As to the establishment of private schools of 

 agriculture, we hardly think the day has arrived 

 when the pioneer in such an undertaking would 

 find his pecuniary advantage in it ; but for our 

 public schools, we would propose such a system 

 as the following : 



Let competent teachers be provided in every 

 district, and suitable land and buildings be ob- 

 tained at the expense of the State. Boys 

 should be admitted from twelve to fifteen, to re- 

 main six years, the only qualification required 

 being fair moral character and the capability of 

 spelling in two syllables. Three hours every 

 day should be devoted to the acquisition of a 

 plain English education, and seven more to piac- 

 tical instruction in agriculture or some of the 

 mechanic arts ; the product of the labor of the 

 pupils to be devoted to the support of the estab- 

 lishment. Appoint an Inspector General, and 

 take care that he is just the right sort of man, 

 whose sole business it shall be to visit and su- 

 perintend all of these institutions, and report to 

 the Legislature the manner in which they are 

 conducted. 



This would be very much upon the principle 

 of the celebrated school at Hofwyl, established 

 by that distinguished philanthropist, M. Fellen- 

 berg. If we had space we should like to con- 



