LEE DEST LEE REDE PS oe EET EE ee EE Sa IE PET UR IE PEE re a TE 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 
| and throwing off carbon, food cannot be regarded 
as nutriment. The oxygen of the air therefore 
serves in part for the nutrition of animals. While 
thus plants derive much nutrition from the air 
and a portion from the soil, animals derive much 
from the soil and a portion from the air. See 
farther under Drcay, Excremunt, Guano, Humus, 
Manure, Purreraction, Sort. 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. Special 
training for the skilful, scientific, and most pro- 
fitable performance of the duties of a farmer. 
Not an art is practised by man which includes a 
greater variety of operations or involves a greater 
amount of scientific principles than farming ; 
and yet almost every other art is popularly re- 
garded as far more technical and intricate, and 
as requiring far higher qualifications, and a far 
more systematic and prolonged course of prepar- 
ation for its successful performance. Popular 
opinion justly imposes a long apprenticeship 
upon every candidate for any department of mere 
handicraft, a long course of preparatory study 
upon every candidate for scientific or intellectual 
employment, and both an apprenticeship and a 
course of preparatory study upon every candi- 
date for several of such professions as combine 
art and science ; and yet, with marvellous incon- 
sistency, it, in most instances, imposes no ap- 
prenticeship and no special study whatever upon 
the candidate for an employment far more noble 
and intricate than any handicraft, and eminently 
combining the influence of at least two-thirds of 
all the physical sciences, with the most varied ma- 
nipulations of very complex art. How monstrous 
is it that, while one man is apprenticed seven 
years in order to make a shoe, another is not ap- 
prenticed at all in order to manage a farm,— 
that while one is required for many years to be 
both an apprentice and a student in order to make 
the contents of the British statute-book bear 
upon a case of litigation, another is not required 
to be either apprentice or student in order to 
make the experience of all countries and ages of 
the civilized world, and the principles and dis- 
coveries of some of the most profound and com- 
plex of human sciences, bear upon the diversified 
and multitudinous practices of agriculture! One 
year to a shoemaker’s apprentice, and three 
years to a young lawyer, ought to be every parti- 
cle as effective as seven years to a candidate for 
farming; and with not more than one or two ex- 
ceptions, not an artificer, an artist, or a profes- 
sional man exists, who requires more special 
training or a larger amount of technical know- 
ledge than a farmer, or who possesses equal facil- 
ities to turn a liberal and munificent education to 
excellent practical account. Were the next gen- 
eration of farmers all over the civilized world to 
be educated comparatively with other men in 
something like the proportions of their callings, 
human society would at one move experience al- 
most as great a transition as when it passed from 
the degradation of the feudal ages to the dignity 
79 
of the nineteenth century. Even an old Roman 
author, amid the martial condition of a proud, 
vicious, and heathenish empire, had the sagacity 
to see the paramount importance of agricultural 
education, and the honesty to utter his astonish- 
ment at its neglect. “Nothing equals my sur- 
prise,” says he, “when I consider that while those 
who desire to learn to speak well select an orator 
whose eloquence may serve them as a model; 
while those who are anxious to dance, or become 
good musicians, employ a dancing or a music 
master; in short, that while every one looks 
for the best master in order to make the best 
progress under his instructions, the most impor- 
tant science, next to that of wisdom, has neither 
pupils nor teachers. I have seen schools estab- 
lished for teaching rhetoric, geometry, music, 
dancing, &c., and yet I have never seen a master 
to teach agriculture, nor a pupil to learn it.” 
Actual farmers, who have had no special train- 
ing may, in multitudes of instances, improve 
their knowledge and their general qualifications 
by free intercourse with persons better informed 
than themselves,—by accepting the advantages 
of example and instruction afforded on the home 
or model farms of many well-conducted estates, 
—by watching the proceedings, and receiving 
the assistance, of the agricultural societies of 
their country or province,—by attending any 
occasional or serial agricultural lectures which 
professional or scientific gentlemen may deliver 
in their vicinity,—and by making a diligent and 
discriminating use of one or more of the best 
books on agriculture. Thousands of the worst 
instructed classes of farmers—particularly such as 
the small peasant-farmers of Ireland—might, by 
the use of several of these means, or even of any 
one of them, speedily acquire such knowledge as 
would enable them to draw twenty or thirty per 
cent. of additional produce from their farms; not 
a few, also, of such farmers as have enjoyed a 
tolerably fair general education, but have not been 
taught to subordinate it fully to their profession, 
may turn any one or more of these means to 
eminent advantage; and even the small number 
of farmers who possess a fair acquaintance with 
all the principles of their art, and can assign a 
scientific reason for every practice and phenome- 
non on their farms, ought, for their neighbours’ 
sakes, to give all such means their strongest 
sanction, and will scarcely fail to derive from 
them an important amount of benefit. 
All descriptions of young persons training to 
be farmers require to spend a large portion of 
their time upon a farm, to observe with all possi- 
ble frequency the practices of the farmery and 
the field, to take full and daily part in the oper- 
ations of every season, and to learn, in a practi- 
cal manner, the nature and conditions of every 
piece of labour, from the coarsest drudgery to 
the nicest and most artistic performance. Mere 
looking on, mere reading, mere listening, mere 
occasional acting, or all these four combined, 
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