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Wisconsin - State Agricultural Society. 
and other countries, and the sooner we get rid of the idea that agri¬ 
cultural or industrial employments, when wisely and properly pur¬ 
sued, are to be exclusively the portion of the degraded and ignorant, 
who are content to go and come through life’s drudgery under the 
light and guidance of an almanac, which directs them when to lie 
down and when to rise, and designates the appointed months for 
seed-time and harvest, the better will it be to mankind; as the false 
notion is deplorably prevalent that the avenues to prosperity, hap¬ 
piness, and honor are through any and all other channels or fields 
of action and enterprise except that one, which, above all others, is 
best calculated to bring man into full communion with the glories 
and realities of nature, and best adapted to the creation and main¬ 
tenance of manly independence and virtue, and that soundness of 
mind, heart, and body, which are impaired by familiarity with, and 
dependence upon, the artificial substitutes for pure atmosphere and 
well-directed or intelligent industry. 
As to the best means of acquiring a sound agricultural education, 
or education upon sound agriculture, or agriculture with education, 
or skilled labor applied to agriculture, many opinions have been ex¬ 
pressed, based on theoretical suggestions and practical results, among 
which are agricultural colleges, which are as likely to increase the 
wear and tear in the hindermost part of students’ pantaloons as to 
augment the numbers of educated farmers, unless accompanied by 
facilities for applying the scientific knowledge acquired in those in¬ 
stitutions, by practice or experiment, to the real and actual opera¬ 
tions of agriculture. 
In England, where, with high rents for lands that are kept in the 
highest attainable degree of productiveness, as a matter of interest 
on the part of the landlord, and of necessity on the part of the ten¬ 
ant or farmer, it is one of the valuable perquisites or sources of 
profit of a successful and skillful agriculturist to educate young 
men, wdiose fathers own valuable landed estates, in the art of farm- 
management, in which stock-raising is justly regarded as a promi¬ 
nent feature, not only on account of its relative or comparative 
profitableness, but as supplying the means of enriching the soil for 
roots and grain-culture. 
An intensely practical wag, with little regard for scientific infor¬ 
mation or investigations and book-treatment, in reference to the 
acquisitions of knowledge required for agricultural pursuits, has 
