Chapin's Address, 
377 
OUR STATE UNIVERSITY, 
is working industriously, as professor of agriculture and chemistry 
to give a thorough and extensive course of scientific instruction, 
Avith constant and direct reference to its practical application to 
the farm and wants of the farmer. 
The university farm is used in experimenting in agriculture and 
horticulture — farm and garden products of this climate. Would 
your boys be educated in the science of agriculture, place them un¬ 
der the care of Prof. Daniells. Would they be educated for trade, 
commerce, professions, agriculture? Don’t look away to Yale or 
Oberlin — to Princeton or Cornell — to Dartmouth or Cambridge; 
but rather to our own State University — its college of agriculture, 
its college of arts, its college of science, its college of letters, its 
college of law. Look also to Ripon, Appleton, Beloit and Milton. 
We have institutions of learning at home. We have the best sys¬ 
tem of public schools, the best seminaries and colleges in the land. 
Let us nourish and protect them, before we go to other states, other 
countries, to build up them and theirs. 
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES. 
Agricultural societies are of recent origin. The first agricultural 
SQciety of which we have any record was established in Philadel¬ 
phia in the year 1785 — nine years after the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence was given to the world. The object sought was to awa¬ 
ken an interest in th^ subject of agriculture and spread abroad use¬ 
ful information. Within a short period of time after the organiza¬ 
tion of this first society, others followed. They, however, were ex¬ 
periments,. They were as skirmishers for the grand army of agri¬ 
cultural societies soon to follow. It was an earnest, anxious effort 
of the learned few to organize these societies for the purpose of 
promoting the highest interest of the people, by the improvement 
of their minds in the pursuit of agriculture as a science. But the 
farmers of that day were not all learned. “ Book farming ” was 
rejected; and these agricultural societies were the direct progeny, 
or offspring, of book farming. 
The advent of book farming among the masses was dreaded, ab¬ 
horred! Not the potato bug, not the grasshopper, nor the chinch 
bug of to-day, is more dreaded or feared by mortal man, or woman. 
