398 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
Some learned men even in our own time have tended to prejudice 
farmers, as a class, against science by their indilference to its prac¬ 
tical applications. I ask pardon if it be not in keeping with the 
occasion, but by their holding that the only object in the study of 
science is that we may be the better able to study still more science, 
some men remind me of the farmer who persisted in cultivating a 
notoriously worthless variety of potatoes, and in answer to inquiry, 
admitted the fact of utter lack of practical value, but urged in ex¬ 
planation of his course, that the tubers of no other variety kept so 
well for seed. And in making practical use of the facts they have 
gained, some seem as little prepared as the class of boys who stood 
aghast at an inquiry how much seven bushels of corn would cost at 
fifty cents a bushel, and explained that all their multiplication had 
been in apples. 
To make a ‘‘ practical application,” I would say that in all his 
teaching of science, the teacher in a college of agriculture should 
never lose sight of its adaptations and practical uses; that he should 
aim, not so much to secure the learning of all possible facts con¬ 
cerning any one branch of natural science, as to seek to impress, 
so far as he may, the general and more important principles of each 
on the mind of the student, “ so as to promote his liberal and prac¬ 
tical education in his pursuit in life.” And that in all his teachings 
he should not forget to inculcate the importance of common sense. 
There is a danger, and in our new country, in which most are 
striving after material things mainly, there is a tendency to narrow¬ 
ness in our views as to what is really needed in education. The 
apt and true saying, that we should teach the child that which he 
wdll be able to make use of in after life, may be given too literal a 
rendering. The knowledge gained in the schoolroom is not all, and 
should not be the major part of an education, general or speciaL 
At the best this will be but a small part of what is to be known; 
and it is more important that the mind should have been started 
aright; that it should have learned how to acquire in the future 
than it should have learned a few more or less facts. 
Some years ago it was said of the English laborer that he was 
but a living tool; unsurpassed as such, but only this and nothing 
more. This is not the type we desire for American farmers. We 
would give them all the mechanical skill possible, but this is not 
enough. An English plowman may be able to put to shame an. 
