100 
ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
farmer devote to the study of poetry and music,.and how 
much time can the poet-musician afford to devote to the 
science and practice of agriculture ? These are questions 
that force themselves upon us. 
To return to the question assigned to me to answer : 
“ What will education do for the fanner ?” 
If you mean by education such mental cultuic as is 
obtained in the average high school, I can answer, unhesi¬ 
tatingly, it will make him a lawyer or a doctor, or a 
minister or an editor. Or, if by chance circumstances force 
him to become a farmer, he does it under protest. 
Teach a man German to prepare him to travel in 
France, and when he arrives at Paris he will realize that 
there is a mistake somewhere. Show a young farmei all the 
advantages and attractions of a mercantile or professional 
life, and none of those which are peculiar to agricultural 
and horticultural pursuits, and the chances are that he will 
soon abandon the country and seek the city. The farmer 
may love music; but if while he is still a farmer, he devotes 
an undue amount of time to the science of music, and . 
utterly neglects the science of agriculture, the probabilities 
are that his farm will soon cease to be sufficiently remunei - 
ative to enable him to gratify his love of song. 
A young man enters the high school. Immediately, 
he commences a course of training exactly calculated to nc 
him for professional or mercantile life.. 
Those branches of study which lawyers and doctors 
and editors and ministers have ever found advantageous to 
them in their spheres of labor, are made most prominent in 
the school. But not one branch of study is found which is 
especially adapted to the wants of the agriculturist! 
Does the pupil study chemistry ? He is taught that 
part of the science which the druggist or physician 
especially needs. Or he is lead to view in a most super¬ 
ficial manner, the science as a whole, from the standpoint of 
some great investigator. Of its application to agriculture 
he learns little or nothing. He learns the names of the ele¬ 
mentary substances and their atomic weights, but of the 
compounds of which ordinary soils are composed he knows 
‘nothing. He can represent upon the black-board many of 
the most complicated chemical reactions, but of the effect of 
mixing wood-ashes and animal manures he IS i^n.01 
The chemistry of food (especially of the food of the 
