State Convention—farmers' sons' Education. 273 
has decided that his sons are to be his successors in his own call¬ 
ing in life, and that he is possessed of means to educate them 
properly and liberally, what is to be the agricultural curriculum 
for general adoption ? In these days of high and graded schools, 
and of the more improved condition of our common schools, not 
large enough to be graded, a great advance has been made upon 
the old course, which embraced the three sciences—“ to read, 
write and cipher,” so that the attendant of the modern common 
school may be presumed to have some knowledge of elementary 
works of a much larger range of the sciences, and even to get 
beyond elementary works. In most of the schools now, the 
classes take up algebra, geometry and trigonometry ; they study the 
higher grammars, physical geography, physiology—the latter a 
most useful study, and should be more generally and thoroughly 
taught—and some even pursue the ancient and modern languages, 
particularly the Latin and German. Having acquired these, and 
any others that I have failed to mention, as embraced in the com¬ 
mon school course, what now shall the young farmer take up 
that we may regard as peculiarly useful and important to him be¬ 
fore he finally passes from theory to practice? I am quite cer¬ 
tain that you have anticipated that I will mention chemistry as 
first in importance. And I doubt whether the most persistent 
opponent of book 'farming will question the correctness of the 
conclusion, and yet how few who follow farming have ever read the 
simplest elementary work upon that science, much less made it a 
study. The tradesman, mechanic and artisan, who should pursue 
his work -without any knowledge of the nature and strength of the 
materials which he handles and shapes into the products of his 
art, would be no more inconsistent than the farmer who looks 
upon the soil in which he digs as only common dirt,—a simple 
element only made to prop up the plants which he raises through 
some mysterious and misunderstood agency, instead of that com¬ 
posite substance that forms a copartnership with sun and atmo¬ 
sphere, heat and moisture, to germinate, nourish and finally ripen 
his products. It may be replied that the great majority of me¬ 
chanics understand as little of the scientific principles upon 
which their trade is based, and from -which it derives its use and . 
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