60 



TJJE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



will generally repair homewards of their own 

 accord. They should be fed at night, before 

 roosting, with oat-meal and skim-milk; and a 

 day or two previous to their being killed, they 

 should get oats exclusively. We have found, 

 from experience, that when turkeys are pur- 

 chased for the table, and cooped up, they will 

 never increase in bulk, however plentifully they 

 may be supplied with food and fresh water, but 

 on the contrary, are very liable to lose flesh. — 

 When feeding them for use, a change of food 

 will also be found beneficial. Boiled carrots and 

 Swedish turnips, or potatoes mixed with a little 

 barley or oat-meal, will be greedily taken by 

 them. A cruel method is practiced by some to 

 render turkeys very fat, which is termed cram- 

 ming. This is done by forming a paste of 

 crumbs of bread, flour, minced suet, and sweet 

 milk, or even cream, into small balls about the 

 bulk of a marble, which is passed over the throat 

 after full ordinary meals. — Farmers' Library. 



AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 



We are opposed to all wild schemes of extra- 

 vagant appropriation from the public fund, be- 

 cause we know that every cent that goes into 

 the public treasury of the State is abstracted 

 from the active capital of her citizens; but there 

 are some subjects of universal and undisputed 

 importance to which it seems the fostering hand 

 of government should be carefully extended. — 

 Amongst these the endowment of schools and 

 .colleges stands pre-eminent. Besides the insti- 

 tutions for general information which have been 

 so liberally endowed by the State, the military 

 profession have a school at Lexington and an- 

 other is warmly urged at Richmond ; the legal 

 and the medical profession have schools devoted 

 to these particular sciences, whilst the agricul- 

 turist and the mechanic must learn his business 

 as he can. Isn't it rather curious to see a com- 

 munity cf farmers legislating most liberally for 

 every profession but their own % We would 

 call the attention of the people to this anomaly, 

 and propose that the great agricultural State of 

 Virginia at the next session of the Legislature 

 endow a school for the promotion of agriculture 

 and the mechanic arts. This is the people's 

 business, and to the people we address ourselves. 

 We believe that one of the greatest errors of 

 the times is the general and indefinite character 

 of education. A boy ought to be educated with 

 a view to his particular calling. A general no- 

 tion of the sciences and some literary cultivation 

 is not less useful than elegant, but to these 



should be united a thorough grounding in the 

 profession which he is to follow. Until he has 

 attained this, he is not fit to go into the world, 

 and his education is not complete. Thus, after 

 he leaves school or college, the intended mer- 

 chant serves his apprenticeship in the counting- 

 house, the mechanic goes to the shop, the law- 

 yer to the office, and the physician to the medi- 

 cal college. But what becomes of the boy who 

 is designed for the profession of agriculture 1 — - 

 He has to grope his wa}^ as he can through the 

 secrets of his profession. Age after age, each 

 follower of this pursuit enters upon it without 

 any more instruction than the hap hazard teach- 

 ing of neighbors and friends may afford him, 

 whilst all the advantages of systematic instruc- 

 tion and all the benefit of the accumulated wis- 

 dom of ages is lost to him and to his profession. 

 Books may do something — books are doing a 

 great deal, but there is an infinite deal of the 

 mechanics of agriculture that can never be 

 learned from books. It is this branch of the 

 profession that is most neglected, and in our opi- 

 nion, it is the most important. For this reason 

 we wouldn't give a fig for a professorship of 

 agriculture. We want a school in which the 

 art as well as the science of agriculture shall be 

 taught. We want a school exactly like the 

 Institute at Lexington, with the exception of 

 substituting agricultural for military exercises. 

 To know how to kill men is all very proper and 

 sometimes very necessary, but it is hardly less 

 useful to teach the great art of feeding and 

 clothing them. Handling a hoe is not more 

 degrading whilst it is infinitely more profitable 

 than handling a musket, and running a furrow 

 is not more laborious nor less useful than mount- 

 ing guard over nothing. 



We want a school in which during a portion 

 of the day competent teachers shall impart in- 

 formation in the several departments of a clas- 

 sical and scientific education, and in which other 

 teachers who shall be entirely competent to the 

 task, shall teach the practical part of the art of 

 agriculture. The boys should be taught to 

 drill-— corn ; to plant, not standards, but potatoes ; 

 to open, not trenches, but ditches; to clean, no,t 

 cavalry, but work-horses ; in short, to be creative 

 rather than destructive. Here it is that the use 

 and principles of agricultural implements should 

 be thoroughly taught, in the only way that they 

 can be thoroughly taught, by actual practice. 

 In this State it is not likely that the farmer 



