STATE CONVENTION—FARMERS'' SONS' EDUCATION. 275 
lie stumble and blunder along through a life of unprofitable labor 
and experiment, untaught even in the alphabet of his calling ? It 
is true, he must experiment; but to profit by it, he must do it in 
accordance with scientific principles. He can succeed otherwise 
only by mere accident; or if he practices only by the experience 
of others, a little change of conditions will upset all his calcula¬ 
tions and disappoint his anticipations. I do not contend that 
every farmer shall keep a laboratory, and undertake the analysis 
of organic substances, but he should have sufficient knowledge of 
the science to understand the formulas of practical and experi¬ 
mental chemists, in order to profit by them, and turn them to 
practical use. 
Let us turn over a leaf, and consider a near relative of the sci¬ 
ence we have first touched upon; cognate, at least so far as the 
purposes of the farmer are concerned—botany. And in this, if 
not in chemistry, real interest and pleasure are mingled with profit. 
The classification, properties and structure of plants are surely 
right in the way of the scientific farmer; the characteristics of the 
flowers, by which the christen as well as the family name of each 
is determined, their myriad shapes and shades, as they are fash¬ 
ioned and colored by the creative hand and pencil of infinity; 
they are the poetry of his profession—the utile dulci in his course 
of study. With a thorough knowledge of botany, when he sees 
an unfamiliar plant in his field, he need not be at any loss, whether 
to foster it as useful or ornamental, or to pluck it up as noxious 
and hurtful. And, for one, I doubt not that if the practical bo¬ 
tanist and the chemist could put their heads together, they could 
concoct from the medicinal plants furnished them by the vegeta¬ 
ble kingdom, a panacea more potent to cure the aches and ills 
that flesh is heir to, than all the mineral drugs named in the med¬ 
ical dictionary, with the artesian magnetic waters thrown in as 
solvents. 
We must hasten over geology, not because it is not an impor¬ 
tant and indispensable part of the farmer-student’s course of 
study, but because time will not admit of an elaborate exposition 
of its advantages. Its practical lessons would go hand in hand 
with chemistry to instruct him in the nature and properties of the 
soil and of the various layers underneath it; to show him the 
