80 
will far less enable a man to conduct a farm than 
even teach him to make a shoe or construct a 
steam engine. Pupil-farmers do not require, in- 
deed, to become adepts in every agricultural prac- 
tice,—they do not need to be the best workmen 
on the farm,—the ablest ploughmen, the most skil- 
ful sowers, the most expert manipulators of the 
stable and the barn; yet they certainly must ac- 
quire sufficient proficiency in every art and pro- 
cess, or at least sufficient practical acquaintance 
with the tact and methods of performing it, to 
be able to instruct others respecting it, and to 
judge when it is well and expertly done. They 
must fully labour, that they may understand the 
| work ; they must fully obey, that they may know 
_ how to command ; they must take part in every 
| thing, that they may learn to make judicious ap- 
plications of the grand economical principle of 
the division of labour; they ought, in fact, to ac- 
| quire the same compr akeaetnre views of the opera- 
_ tions of the farm as the farmer himself or the 
_ farmer’s steward, and to share by turns in all the 
| operations which these comprise. 
| naturally reside on a large, well-conditioned, and 
If the pupil 
well-conducted farm, he of course cannot learn 
better than where he is; if he reside on a stock- 
farm, or small and ill-conditioned arable farm, 
_he ought, if possible, to be placed, during two 
years, on a farm of superior character; and if he 
reside, in either town or country, with parents 
or guardians who are not farmers, he ought to 
be apprenticed for three or more years with a 
skilful, scientific, extensive, upright farmer, who 
shall agree to treat him as if he were his son. 
Yet mere practical learning—as we have al- 
ready hinted—will as completely fail to make a 
man a wise farmer as mere theory. The pupil, 
by carefully imitating all around him, may be- 
come a very expert monkey ; but, unless he learn 
a reason for every operation, he will never farm 
like a rational being. His business, in preparing 
to become a farmer, is to learn the science of 
agriculture as truly as the art,—the principles of 
it as thoroughly as the practices. He ought, 
therefore, during the whole course of his practi- 
cal instruction on the farm, to be receiving ex- 
planations of the phenomena which he witnesses 
and the practices in which he shares,—to be 
soliciting information respecting every matter 
which he does not clearly understand,—and to 
be exercising his judgment as to the fittest mode 
of performing operations, the likeliest mode of 
overcoming difficulties, and the most feasible 
mode of attempting improvements. When he is 
under the care of a father or a kind master who 
farms intelligently, and possesses a fair share of 
| science, he ought to acquire from him a large 
amount of the requisite intellectual instruction ; 
yet, even in this case—and unspeakably more if he 
| be under the care of a mere imitative farmer— 
he requires the aid of such stores of knowledge 
as can be obtained only from other sources and 
by separate study. He needs, in fact, to be 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 
—a 
scientifically trained with books and by a school- 
master, not less than to be practically trained 
with implements and by the farmer. 
Whatever any ordinary school can furnish, in 
the departments of English education, writing, 
arithmetic, book-keeping, and elementary mathe- 
matics, ought, as a matter of course, to be ac- 
quired by every son of a farmer, and by every 
other boy who is likely to become an agricultur- 
ist; and till more suitable institutions shall be 
called into existence, select academies, schools of 
art, mechanics’ institutions, occasional series of 
lectures, private courses of scientific lectures in 
cities, and the public lectures in universities,— 
or, in the absence of all these, public libraries and 
private copies of select books,—must be looked 
to as the grand sources of all the other requisite 
departments of information. Four general topics 
—chemistry, veterinary surgery, natural history, 
and natural philosophy—comprise the whole 
circle of those sciences which the agricultural 
pupil requires to study ; and though two of them 
include the numerous and important subdivisions 
of geology, mineralogy, botany, vegetable physi- 
ology, zoology, anatomy, meteorology, electricity, 
magnetism, pneumatics, dynamics, and mechan- 
ics, yet all may be competently studied in them- 
selves, and sufficiently understood in their adap- 
tations to agriculture, in the course of three 
years’ attendance at such seats of learning as | 
Edinburgh, London, Dublin, Glasgow, Aberdeen, 
or Belfast,—or in the course of four years sedu- 
lous and judicious use of the best public appliances 
which the nearest considerable town affords, com- 
bined with copious reading and reflection. ‘The 
whole time consumed in the professional training 
of a young farmer, would thus be three years on 
the farm and three at a seat of learning; and 
surely, when we consider the great comparative 
importance of his vocation, and the vast power 
which he acquires from knowledge to render that 
vocation productive to himself and to society, 
this amount of time cannot but be pronounced 
economically small. Whatever comfortable farmer 
grudges his son so moderate a quantum of pro- 
fessional education, deserves, in punishment of 
his parsimony, to be constantly worried with the 
attacks of vermin and the blunders of boors. We 
must not be understood, however, as saying either 
that the three years of practical education are all 
to be spent in sheer labour on the farm, or that 
the three years of scientific education are all to 
be spent in sheer study at a seat of learning, or 
that the topics and appliances which we have 
named are the only ones worthy of the pupil’s 
attention. The more the practical part of the 
training is intermixed with science, the sooner 
and better will the principles of it be understood ; 
the more the scientific part of it is interspersed 
with periods of recess from the seat of learning 
and of labour on the farm, the more freely will 
its acquisitions adapt themselves to both present 
and permanent utility; and the more liberally 
