106 
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS. 
ficiently ea.r]y in the autumn, to prevent any poach¬ 
ing, by which unsightly holes are made for standing 
water, and to the total exclusion of all growth of 
grass. If the herbage at any time becomes thin or 
deficient, or mosses or weeds encroach upon the 
useful growth, guano, ashes, plaster, lime, stable- 
manure, peat, or muck composts should he added to 
remedy the first, and the usual appliances resorted 
to for removing the last. Thus managed and grazed 
by choice breeds of stock, every way well looked 
after, the farmers generally will find their most pro¬ 
fitable returns from grass lands. 
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS. 
To Legislators throughout the United States —or 
rather to their constituents, as the former are merely 
their servants—their waiting echo. 
The establishment of Agricultural Schools and 
Colleges by our legislative bodies has been repeat¬ 
edly urged in these columns, but hitherto, like many 
other important things, without success. Although 
hopeless of securing any present aid for these most 
praiseworthy objects, by our National or State 
Legislatures, we yet deem it incumbent upon us, as 
conductors of a public journal, whose sole object is 
the advancement of the agricultural classes, to re¬ 
iterate and re-urge this question. If we cannot for 
the present induce any favorable action from those 
who are' delegated to enact laws, we can bring the 
subject to the attentive consideration of those who 
select their representatives for this purpose. We 
thus hope to enlighten public sentiment on this all- 
important matter; and if the people are once 
awakened to its importance, they will see to it, that 
their representatives do not long continue to neglect 
their interests. If they will not lead in a measure 
of such vital consequence to this, the largest inter¬ 
ests of the community, they can be driven into it 
when the people have become aroused. ; 
It is somewhat strange, and entirely unaccount¬ 
able on any other principle than narrowness of 
views, discreditable to the age, or the utter subser¬ 
viency of our leading men to the behests of party, 1 
that they cannot take this single step in advance of 
the practice of past ages, and assume the responsi¬ 
bility of maturing and carrying out a measure 
fraught with so much benefit to the country at 
large, as would result from the establishment of one 
or more institutions, which will bring to the minds 
of adults as well as youth, the great principles and 
the most approved practice of Agricultural Science. 
Should our law-makers vote an amount perfectly 
adequate to the purchase of a suitable experimental 
farm and the erection of proper buildings, apparatus, 
&c., and engage some able men to carry out the 
objects of the undertaking, can it be doubted that 
the farmers of the great State of New York would 
not most fully sustain it ? Are they for ever to re¬ 
main the hewers of wood and drawers of water to 
every other class in the community, and see thou- 1 
sands annually devoted to the higher branches of 
education in other professions, and they not be 
allowed to receive a meagre per centage of this out¬ 
lay, for the necessary improvement of their own 
profession and interests ? True, they can participate, 
m common with others, in the higher walks of 
academical and collegiate education, provided by 
the munificence of the State; yet they will find 
there little to fit them for their own peculiar sphere. 
The discovery of a new world of agricultural 
science has burst upon this age; and order and de¬ 
sign are found to govern, by the exactest principles 
and laws, every one of nature’s operations. Many 
of these principles and laws have been detected by 
the ablest scientific explorers of Europe, such as 
Davy, Chaptal, BoUssingault, Liebig, Johnston, and 
others. These discoveries, and what are destined 
to succeed them, will give to agricultural pursuits 
a precision and advantage, similar to what follow- 
led the discovery of the magnet in maritime affairs.- 
The farmer has, from time immemorial, been groping 
■in the dark ; he knew only what experience reveal¬ 
ed to him; and even from this he often drew false 
; conclusions, from not being able to comprehend all 
the premises, and the most ordinary operations of 
nature. With well known, undeviating principles 
with which to work, the Agriculturist could push 
boldly into the ocean of experiments, and calculate, 
with unerring certainty, his latitude and longitude, 
and the precise distance he was from any given 
point, instead of slowly coasting along, dangerous, 
dreary coasts, in continual fear of shipwreck. 
The difference between the practice of a farmer of 
the last century and of one in the age to come, will 
not be less than the difference between a voyage 
from Liverpool to Boston by the Cunard l-ine of 
steamers, and a coasting voyage from the same 
point, by the Scottish coast, the Orkneys and Shet¬ 
land isles. Nova Zembla, the Polar ice, Greenland, 
and the north-eastern coast of America, in the 
ancient craft of the Carthaginians or freebooting 
Danes and Swedes. 
Talk of the agricultural intelligence of this age ? 
Why, it is merely this ; some few intellectual men 
of other countries—scarcely any of our own,—have 
just overstepped that horizon of darkness, which 
has hitherto hedged in the world, and made a few 
preliminary discoveries ! What a poor amount of 
agricultural knowledge is this! It is in the spirit 
of the age, and should be peculiarly that of t-his 
country, which boasts of its intelligence, to carry 
out by every means in its power, so laudable, so 
intelligent, and withal so money-making a scheme ,— 
for “ money ” is the lalismanic word we are forced 
to use. But so little light has hitherto penetrated 
among our agriculturists, that five-sixths of the 
most intelligent of them will tell you, that “ the 
new of the moon is the time for this, the first quar¬ 
ter for that, her fulling for another, and her waning 
for something else.” Not even a Farmer's Almanac 
will sell, without a mystic figure installed as the 
key of nature, surrounded by the Zodiac and its 
signs, whose converging rays indicate the hidden 
secrets of nature, and expose 1 the whole cycle of 
her operations! Astrology, that has been aban¬ 
doned by the world at large for two hundred yeai;» 
or more, is good enough to reveal the mysteries oi 
the farmer’s art, embracing, as it does, almost all the 
laws of nature! Out upon the twaddle, and more 
unmeaning gibberish than nursery maids deal out to- 
nurslings, when they tell the farmers, “ their dear 
constituents,”—“ the bone and sinew of the land”~ 
“ the most enlightened class of the country,” - 
“ the expectancy and rose of the fair State,” an® 
