202 
The Present State of Ayriculttire 
How often do we see the ener<jy of one man ill or wrongly di- 
rected because he knows too little of what he enprages in, while, 
under the lyuidance of knowledge, every step, impelled by the 
energy of another, is observed to be a sure stride in advance ! 
Conceding, therefore, that there are many minor obstacles with 
which practical agriculture has to contend, and which its friends 
will labour assiduously to remove, I look upon defective know- 
ledge, on the part of us all, as the first and most serious obstacle, 
and the one which we ought to work the hardest to take out of 
the way. But this defective knowledge may be regarded in two 
aspects. We are ignorant as individuals, in comparison with what 
other men know ; or the whole sum of existing knowledge is 
defective, compared with what yet remains to be discovered. 
In our standard books, and in the heads of the smaller number 
of our scientific and practical men, there exists a large amount of 
valuable information which is more or less completely unknown 
to the mass of our actual farmers. This head knowledge guides 
the hands of the skilful, tempers their energy, and by what we 
might almost call a mysterious sympathy, persuades the willing 
soil to yield increased returns. Such knowledge as this may 
become the property of all, and should be made readily accessible 
to all. The common good of the landlord and the tenant — of 
the manufacturing and the agricultural interests — is involved in 
its general diffusion among all classes of the agricultural com- 
munity. The college and the school, the professor and the 
schoolmaster, are tools which here, in England, have scarcely as 
yet been employed for this purpose. It is true that meetmgs 
like the present, which are more or less frequent in our several 
counties, are a kind of large Lancastrian schools, where every 
man is monitor to his neighbour. Some of the grown scholars 
read and commit their yearly lessons well, and think over and 
digest them from month to month ; while upon the mass — unapt 
to learn, and untrained to think — they produce but a faint and 
fading impression. 
Of late vears also a lesson in science has been conjoined at 
these meetings with the previous practical teaching on the con- 
struction and use of implements, and the qualities and rearing of 
stock. From this well-considered arrangement good results 
cannot fail to flow. Among the thousands who come here to- 
gether, there are many whose minds are more inclined to the 
intellectual than to the purely practical, and who are interested 
as much by an exposition of the reasons of things as by the 
sensible study of the things themselves. To such minds your 
discourses on science supply appro})riate food, and you enlist 
them almost unconsciously as propagators of that higher know- 
ledge you desire to spread. 
