390 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
AGKICULTURAL SCHOOLS. 
From the Government Report on Education in Europe and America, 
BY DR. J. W. HOYT, 
United States Commissioner to the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867. 
Agriculture, tliough first among the occupations of men in 
the order of time, and the most complex and dtfficult in actual 
practice, for the reason that it touches the domain of every 
science, and cannot by any possibility, except upon virgin 
soils and under a combination of the most favorable circum" 
stances, attain to the highest success until it shall have 
mastered the principles of each and brought them into its 
service—agriculture, first among the arts in importance, and 
surely destined in the further progress oif the race to be first, 
also, in rank and honor, has been the very last to acknowl¬ 
edge its dependence on the sciences, and so avail itself of 
their teachings. But conviction is coming at last; and to-day 
no educational question occupies more of the attention of the 
educators and statesmen of civilized nations than how to 
organize and operate institutions and other agencies for the 
development of agricultural science and the diffusion of its 
light among the groping millions who cultivate the soil. 
For many years after the development of true chemical and 
physiological science, and the dim recognition of its applica¬ 
bility to agriculture, the only instruction in any sense profes¬ 
sional, or that had direct bearing upon the agricultural art? 
was given from single chairs tardily established in here and 
there a liberal institution in the Old World. 
One of the first of these tentative efforts to elevate and 
advance agriculture had its origin at Alfort, near Paris, 
