A I) D E S Pt DELIVERED BEFORE TIHE N,. STATE ARIIICULTURAL SOCIET, BY JOSEPH KIWILLIAMS, (PRESIDENT OF THE MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.) At Syracuse, October 8, 1858. ALBANY: PRINTED BY C. VAN BENTIUYSEN. 1858. ADDRESS. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New York State Agricultural Society: I propose to speak to you to day, upon AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, a subject that has heretofore engaged your earnest deliberations. The relative importance of Agriculture, as a human pursuit, demands little discussion. Should vegetation be suspended for six months, all animal life would perish, and our race become extinct. All industry, all prosperity, all human existence then, depend on Agricultural production. We often talk of Manufacturing countries, of Commercial countries, of Agricultural countries, but there is no large community, whose Agricultural interests do not far exceed all other interests combined, Great Britain is perhaps regarded as the most exclusively Manufacturing and Commercial Nation that has ever existed. Yet vast and wonderful as her Manufactures are, penetrating as her Commerce does every ocean and every 4 inlet on the face of the globe, yet just so far as she excels other nations in Commerce and Manufactures, she excels them in Agriculture also. The returns of her Income Tax show, that twothirds of all the net income from the industry of the empire is derived from Agriculture. In some nations one-half, in others nineteen-twentieths, of the people depend on the soil for subsistence. The average is probably seven-eighths. Such being the great controlling fact, the trades, pursuits and professions, which the subdivision of industry, among civilized men, renders necessary, have been the especial objects of protection and sympathy, while Agriculture, the nursing mother of all pursuits, just begins to attract that aid and encouragement which its relative importance demands. When we look abroad upon the magnificent spectacle these grounds' present to day, we are not surprised that your great Annual Festival has become National in its character and its attractions, for it speaks trumpet tongued of a nation's present capacities and future grandeur. When we look at that long, array of majestic cattle; at the splendid combination of symmetry, speed and strength, which those matchless horses present; the sheep with their ponderous fleeces; the fruit so richly tinted and so luscious, that if a modern Eve should be arraigned for plucking, no gallant jury would find her guilty; the machinery and implements,, ranging from the powerful grain reaper to the most exquisite garden utensil, the most stubborn mind must be filled with admiration and patriotic pride. Agricultural improvement has received more impetus during a single generation than during the six generations preceding. Yet progress has been very perceptible, though very gradual, for two centuries. The England of Victoria supports seventeen millions of people in far greater plenty than the England of James II. supported five millions; and the Prussia of to day sustains with greater abundance her seventeen millions than the Prussia of the Great Frederic supported one quarter of that number. The improvement is felt in civilized Europe among the people, as well as manifested in efforts almost gigantic. The rescue of the vast marshes of Tuscany, to become again, as in ancient times, the abodes of a busy population; the reclamation in Russia, near St. Petersburgh, of a wide area of similar land; the draining of Haarlaem Lake, in Holland, by steam machinery, the most formidable of all undertakings in the cause of Agriculture, and planting an industrious people on its former bed; and in England the conversion of the fens of Lincolnshire into productive estates; the extensive irrigation and draining over the whole breadth of the island, are cheering evidences of noble progress. Forty years since there were no Fairs, no Periodicals, no Discussions, few inventions of farm implements, and only at long intervals were new breeds and seeds disseminated. In our country, I think every candid man will admit the great improvement during the last thirty years. Travel along any highway, and he will be struck with the improved size and health of the whole cattle of the country. The sheep have improved in quality and doubled in value. In implements used, there has been a general, though not entire, revolution. Grain crops, fruits and vegetables, have improved. The change is as marked in the superior address and increased intelligence of the masses of men. Offensive exhibitions of poverty are witnessed only at longer intervals, and in fact rarely seen at all. We need not go to the Tax List nor the Census; we find convincing proofs of thrift in increased personal comfort, and increased national wealth. I would gladly continue the contemplation of the fairest features of the subject. Let us view it, however, in a gloomier and far more suggestive aspect, more worthy of your serious reflections. This splendid exhibition does not tell the whole truth. It is not a type, either of the actual condition, or the actual husbandry of the whole country. It is selected-it is exceptional. It affords evidences of what glorious results can be accomplished, rather than of what has been generally attained. Thousands to day witness for the first time the perfection and beauty to which animal and vegetable productions and agricultural implements can be brought. A new world is opened to them in culture. What proportion of the farmers of the State raise such stock, or grain, or vegetables, or use such tools, as this exhibition affords? One excels in horses, another in sheep, another in cattle, another in large crops of grain. But each production depends on the observance of the like inexorable laws. A farmer who excels in one could excel in all. But I will venture to say that there are not twenty farmers in the State who carry the same comprehensive knowledge and fidelity into all the details of their business, and bring all the products of their industry to anything like an equal perfection. Turn with me to the Census of 1850, and you will find that the average production of wheat in the State of New York was twelve bushels, of corn twenty-seven bushels, and of hay one and one-eighth tons per acre. You will find sufficient evidences within these grounds, of crops three or four times as large. It will be readily conceded that these crops can be and ought to be doubled. Allow for increased area under cultivation at this time, double the crop, and then deduct one-third of the increased production for increased expense of cultivation, and the loss to the State of these three crops, stinted and deficient as they are, is at least $50,000,000. This is not all. New York probably has 15,000,000 acres of cultivated land. All over her surface are exhausted and neglected fields. They have been cropped and over-cropped; no subsoil plow has penetrated them; they are renovated by no green crops, no rotation, no fertilizers. So much area and capital lie idle and useless. That 10,000,000 acres of land in New York are annually damaged twenty cents per acre, would be a moderate calculation. Here is a loss of $2,000,000 annually. Let us generalize a little. Let us apply similar calculation to the whole Union. The average production of wheat in the United States, in 1850, was less than-eleven bushels; of corn, less than twenty-five and one-half bushels; and of hay, one and one-fifth tons per acre. The corn crop was valued as $296,035,552, the wheat crop at $100,485,944, the hay crop at $96,870,494. The aggregate value was $493,391,990. Double the production, and deduct one-third of the increase for increased cost, and the profit to the whole nation would be $328,927,993. I need not pause to call your attention to the desolated and abandoned plantations, all over the Southern States. Millions of the virgin soils of the Western States have already been injured by exhaustive cultivation. Our people seem to be betrayed into this ruinous policy, by the facilities with which new lands can be obtained to replace the exhausted. While the average size of farms is 203 acres, as it was in 1850, this wasting system may be continued. Economy in practice keeps pace, in some measure, with density of population. Accordingly, in Belgium, where the popu2 lation is 336 to the square mile, and in China, where they have nearly reached the starvation point, the necessity of self preservation has driven. the people to many of the samle methods that are with us the result of scientific deduction. The worst result of a thriftless culture is not told. Too large a proportion of the farmers of the West, and the planters of the South, owe their crops in advance. They pay the crops of this year to extinguish the debts of the last. The consequence of this fatal negligence, pecuniarily, socially, personally, nationally, I have not time to pursue. I will remind you, however, that the rural population meets a terrible retribution in the tribute paid by labor to capital, the perpetual debt, which hangs like an incubus upon their energies, of country to city, and the disproportionate share of human earnings concentrated in great cities, some of which is dedicated to noble uses, but too much of it consumed in reckless extravagance, in crime and debasing indulgences. All that our country needs, with her vast, untested capacities, in order to exhibit the most prodigious results in Agriculture that the world has yet witnessed, is KNOWLEDGE, penetrating 11 deeply, and disseminated universally -among the ruxal population. It cannot be denied that in times past the most moderate talents, and little intelligence, were deemed adequate for the tillage of the earth. The farm laborers of continental Europe live in the same cottages-often in mud cabins without furniture-and plod along in the same track as their forefathers. They cling to gross superstitions, and ancestral usages, and scorn books and instruction. In many portions they persistently draw the plow with ropes tied to the horns of oxen, and generally reap their grain with the sickle. In England, the tenure of landed property, and its accumulation in few hands, the crushing burdens of Church and State, and the consequent poverty and ignorance, render farm laborers a complete tributary population. An American traveler in England, inquired of a group of farm laborers if they were prospering. "No," replied one of their number, "we are haying!" This is rather a ludicrous, but striking illustration of the ignorance of English farm laborers. In our country alone is the farmer a man, socially and politically a deloped man and freeman. Whether in that loftier acceptation he will stand the test, 12 "He is a freeman whom the truth makes free," may admit of greater doubt. The pervading sentiment among a great portion of the farmers themselves, in regard to the dignity of their calling, and the knowledge required for its pursuit, is humiliating. Farming communities are decimated of the boys of most active intellect, sent off to city or college, to follow other pursuits more respectable in the apprehension of the family. As surely as in ancient times, feats of valor and of arms being alone the theme of song and story, and winning alike the smiles of beauty and the applause of the powerful, sifted the masses of genius, energy and courage, so in modern days the brilliancy of great fortunes, and professional renown, have attracted a large portion of its capacity and energy from the rural population. The victims are, it is true, tempted by a siren's song. Ruined health, doubtful reputation, bankruptcy, and sometimes crime, tell the sad history of regiments of infatuated men. The aspirations of few are realized, and to them life loses its zest before ambition is gratified. Go into a public assembly, and if the speech is dull and stupid, ten to one the farmer who stands next to you, will declare that the speaker had 13 better go back to the plow or the jack-plane, thus acknowledging that inferiority of talent is sufficient for his own noble calling. You have throughout the State, at this season, County Agricultural Fairs. The cities and villages have been ransacked for orators. You have sought them among lawyers, doctors, professors and politicians. Each pursuit should furnish its own teachers-its own prophets. If, per6hance, a farmer here and there has ventured to address his brethren, to tell stern truths, in his plain and homely way, farmers will be the first to abuse him for his temerity, and pursue him with the most uncharitable criticism. Such are some of the evidences of the degraded estimation, too often placed upon their avocation, by the farmers themselves. If there is any pursuit which demands for its most successful prosecution acute powers of observation, comprehensive intellect, and most abundant and varied knowledge, it is that of the farmer. There is scarcely a science which will not shed a flood of light along the pathway of the farmer, and a knowledge of the practical arts and trades of life, must constantly aid and relieve him. So thickly do objects of interest and study 14 cluster around him, that if an enthusiast, he might exhaust a lifetime on his own farm in pursuit of a single science. The farmer deals with life. He is entrusted with the life and health of his own family. All animals upon his farm are dependent upon him. He expends his labor and skill in promotion of vegetable life. How important it is, therefore, that he possess a knowledge of Animal and Vegetable Physiology. The farmer should be himself a fully developed and healthy man. Yet living under conditions, and in an atmosphere so much more propitious to health than the sedentary man, or the pent up inhabitant of cities, how does it happen that the average life of farmers very little exceeds the average life of men in other pursuits? The reason is evident. While the life of the citizen is abridged by effeminacy, noxious air, and contagious diseases, the life of the farmer is shortened by excessive exposures, imprudences, and a general defiance of the laws of health. A farmer should be familiar with the general laws by which all animals grow, thrive, and decay. When his own family are in danger, he demands the skill of a physician, who has bestowed a great share of his life in obtaining the necessary know ledge of the human frame, and its mysterious functions. But every domesticated animal belongs to the same class of animals, mammalia, as himself, endowed with a similar, and in some cases, as delicate an organization. He should know enough at least, not to expose them to vague quackery. You have perhaps half a million of horses in the State of New York. How many are destroyed by quackery? and what loss is incurred? At least a million of dollars annually. So important does the French government consider this subject, that it supports three great Veterinary Colleges. They are resorted to by students from all France, and two hundred and forty Scholarships are distributed at the Government expense, sixty-eight at large, and two to each of the eighty-six Departments of France. I should not expect every farmer to be a physician, but how invaluable to him, often living in an isolated position, would be a mastery of the general principles on which the preservation of health depends. I need not say how many thousand victims could be rescued from gross superstition, or the vilest quackery. The farmer's principal vocation is to deal with vegetable life. The assumption is that he knows 16 all about it, when in fact he knows very little. The laws by which a single stalk of corn is sustained, and grows, are as inscrutable as those by which Uranus is whirled in its vast orbit-yes, more, because the elements, the rapidity, the course of the planet's motion, are comprehended, while the laws of the growth of the tiniest plant are not. We plow, drain and pulverize the soil, and plant the seed, and nurse it. It grapples its hundred rootlets widely in the soil, and throws out its branches to gather food from the air, the rains, and the dews. It thrives vigorously, and pushes out stronger roots —the atmosphere and the soil reciprocating the aids which each affords the other. The farmer cultivates the plant, and destroys all rival vegetation likely to exhaust or choke it. But his appliances are mechanical. His knowledge is arrested on the very threshold we desire to cross. The mysterious agencies by which the plant is invigorated, and by which it converts into grain, fruit and vegetables, its invisible and intangible food, are beyond his control. An endless field for scientific research is here opened. Botany will constantly illustrate the pursuit of the farmer. I need only call your attention 17 to the subject of hybridization of plants, by which new varieties are multiplied. The display of flowers, so multiform and gorgeous, and those lengthened benches, groaning under huge piles of vegetables brought to such perfection, attest how much our gardens, parlors and tables, owe to science in this department. Here is an instance where research, purely scientific, has often doubled the value of the earnings of the farmer or gardener. What do croakers against Books and Science do with such a fact? Horticulture can hardly be pursued without a knowledge of this subject. Farmers in general treat the subject of Horticulture with too much contempt. Nothing throws around the homestead so many attractions as the orchard and garden. Even to the common subject of grafting and budding, a great majority of farmers have paid little attention. The pomologists here will tell you that they have been frequently asked to day for specimens of cultivated fruit, for propagation of the same kinds, from the pit or seed. This seems incredible, but so it is. Practical men have laughed over the story of the College educated gentleman who lost a shoe off his horse and carried a skillet handle to the blacksmith to repair 3 18 it with. Yet he exhibited no greater ignorance than the man who would attempt to raise cultivated fruit from the seed or pit. Chemistry perhaps, of all the sciences, is that which will aid the farmer most. Its analyses will show the constitutent parts of animal and vegetable matter; it will eliminate from the fibrous the nutritive portions; it will prove which are the most profitable, and in many cases, which are the most healthy productions; it will compare different grains, and tell you the relative portions of gluten, starch, oil, sugar, albumen, water, potash, lime, &c., contained by each; it will disclose which grain possesses most of the elements conducive to vital heat to the animal, which contains the most fattening material, and which will build up fastest the muscular system. Chemistry will also show the imperative necessity of saving everything of an animal or vegetable nature, and indicate the most economical and sure methods of preservation. The sterilization of land is owing to the fact, that organic matter is sold in the crop, burned, evaporated, or whirled away in the running stream. I doubt not, there are daily thrown into the streets of the city,. or into the canal, such 19 quantities of organic matter, in process of decomposition, as would fertilize thousands and tens of thousands of acres of land. Chemistry will teach you how it can be composted and preserved, and its volatile and offensive elements arrested, deodorized, packed away for future uses. Within the State of New York, untold amounts of wealth are annually wasted for want of a little knowledge of Chemistry. Almost every locality contains vegetable deposits, or lime, or marl, or some renovating element. The barn-yard manure, liquid and solid; the offal of the house, vegetable or animal, composted with muck or peat; the volatile elements, held captive by cheap substances for which they have affinity, and the mass preserved till it is thoroughly decayed and assimilated, would preserve any farm in a state of productiveness, that would be otherwise soon exhausted. Most estates possess within themselves the elements sufficient to keep them in perpetual fertility. How many millions of dollars would have been saved to the State of New York, had the farmers of the past generation known, appreciated and profited by this great, vital and fundamental law, that all animal and vegetable matter taken from the soil, or its 20 equivalent, must be restored to it, or certain ruin commences. I know that it is somewhat the fashion to decry Agricultural Chemistry, because its analyses of soils have not proved entirely satisfactory. But if Chemistry never analyzed a shovel full of soil, its services would be invaluable in the provinces named. When Chemistry takes the mineral coal or the medicinal spring, upon a farmer's land, and tells him unerringly the component parts and value; when it takes his food and the food of his cattle, and tells him what nutriment it contains; when it exposes every adulteration of food, or liquids, or drugs, in which commerce deals; when it detects poison and arrests crime; when it carries its lamp among the miners in the bowels of the earth, and there holds guardianship over human life itself, and we recollect that these acts are but types of its mysterious agency, it ill becomes us to wrest from it its scales, its crucibles, and its re-agents, when they are applied to the earth, on whose productions teeming millions of men and myriads of animals subsist, to compel her to yield up more of her secrets for amelioration of the condition of the race. When Franklin drew down the lightning 21 with his kite, the skeptics of those days doubtless derided his experiments as futile and dangerous; yet the last reverberations of the cannon have hardly died upon the ear, the last flickering blaze of the bonfires have hardly expired, that celebrated the most important achievement of man since the discovery of this continent by Columbus, of which Franklin's experiment was the germ. Let us not discourage science from delving into the earth, if such are the prolific results of her researches elsewhere. Geology would constantly aid the farmer in a knowledge of the composition of soils. But the bearings of this science upon culture, open too wide a fie4d for discussion. There can be nothing so startling in romance, or instructive in story, as the mutations of the earth through its geological epochs, till it finally became suitable for the habitation of man. Mineralogy, Meteorology, Natural History, are all subsidiary to the pursuits of the farmer. The study of Entomology, with the aid of the microscope, is destined to prove of great value to Agriculture. Every leaf, every animal, is covered with parasites. Insect life crawls and flies everywhere; it is visible and invisible; it is a protec 22 tive sentinel, or a destructive pest. Some insects live by the destruction of our crops. Some are predatory, and live on insects, or the eggs of insects, most noxious to man. Each crop, each fruit, has its peculiar enemies in infinite variety. No revelations can be more beautiful, and at the same time more valuable, than those of the microscope. The functions, habits and food of insects are important subjects of investigation. The State appropriation to promote the investigations of Dr. Fitch, the Entomologist of this Society, was therefore an enlightened and judicious act. The most terrible scourge ever known to the wheat crop, the Midge, is now committing its ravages over the continent. Your able and efficient Secretary estimated the loss by its ravages in 1854, in the State of New York alone, at fifteen millions of dollars. It has carried its wide devastation over the wheat zone to the Mississippi. The habits of this insect are partially understood. How and when it deposits its eggs, how it is hatched and fed on the tender kernels of wheat as a grub, how it falls to the earth and burrows till the following year, how it is warmed into life and emerges a winged insect just when the wheat is in the milk, and deposits 23 its eggs again —so much is known, but in all attempts to arrest or destroy it, we are baffled. He would be ranked among the benefactors of mankind, who should discover how to arrest or destroy it. How often does the farmer boast that he knows all about farming, and asks nothing of science. Yet here is a minute insect, not one-tenth of an inch in length, that contests with proud man his right to the most important article of human food, and wrests it from him. Man may arrogate omniscience in his calling, but he cannot cope with this insignificant Midge. The more extended knowledge a farmer possesses of mathematics, the more ready he is for emergencies in his private business, and the more useful he proves as a citizen. He need not be a profound mathematician. He may not be able to calculate the orbit of the comet, now visible in our firmament, but no day escapes when a knowledge of surveying, leveling, guaging, and of measuring solids and areas generally, would not be valuable. That intuitive aptness in the application of mechanical powers, which enables some men to avail themselves skillfully and at once of machinery, is possessed by few. Precise mathematical knowledge is required by most minds for 24 its comprehension. Even in the elementary branch of arithmetic, the farmer who is most prompt and rapid in the application of his knowledge, is the most useful citizen in his vicinity. A thorough knowledge of the Constitution of the United States, and his own State, should be acquired by every good citizen in early.life. So should he be able to draught common legal instruments. A member of the Senate of a neighboring State, himself a practical farmer, informed me that he was the only man within six miles of him, not a professional man, who could draught a legal instrument. A knowledge of book-keeping and accounts is as necessary, and should be deemed as indispensable to any farmer who has business to transact, as the capacity to raise the crops in which he deals. I think I have said enough to prove that every art and every science may conspire to increase his enjoyments and profits, and confer dignity and grace upon the tiller of the soil. It is the ART of ARTS, the SCIENCE of SCIENCES, where physical and intellectual capacity, judgment, taste and learning may aid to produce the most triumphant success. It is an erroneous, a contemptible idea, that the highest degree of education cannot be employed in one calling as well as another. Indeed I can conceive of no life, that followed in its comprehensive spirit and grasp, would call more varied powers and acquisitions into action, inspire more of the faculties and energies of man, and test his ingenuity more frequently, than the life of a farmer. The application of Science to Agriculture has just begun, and is destined to produce wonderful changes in the production of food and clothing for man. While his profession is liberal, and his sphere of inquiry wide, while his pursuit is calculated to produce harmonious development of mind and body, and continuous health, this ever buoyant, ever cheering, ever glorious reflection must dwell upon the mind of the tiller of the soil, that he helps to create his own support, and clothe and feed his brother men, instead of consuming their substance. In witnessing the development of the crop, from the germination of the seed till his golden harvests are housed, he need not have perpetrated a wrong. No reckless experiment on life or property, no compromise with perjury or crime, no trickery nor fraud, nor extortion, nor usury, need creep in to poison the gratification with which he can proudly smile upon his conquests. 4 26 And now arises the question: Are facilities for sufficient education within reach of the youth of the rural population? It is a vital question, not for you, not for this State only, but for our common country and the age. The whole population of the State of New York in 1850 was 3,097,394. Of this number about 16 per cent. were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, or nearly 500,000. Of these rather more than one-half were females, leaving, however, nearly 250,000 young men. There were only 2,673 enrolled in all the colleges of the State. Allow four times, six times, yea, nearly nine times as many to enjoy good advantages of education in advanced schools and academies, making the whole number 25,000, and then allow for the class so irremediably stupid that they will not seek and couild not profit perhaps by education, and for those who possess such vitality and ekergy of mind as to overleap all barriers and drink in education, as they live and move —25,000 more-and you still have 200,000 of the young men of New York, deprived of all education beyond that which the meager Common School affords. It may be said that a large proportion of these youth, in such a state as this, 27 reside in cities and towns. Very well! It only changes the argument, and proves the necessity of Industrial as well as Agricultural Colleges for your communities. We have, or soon shall have, in Michigan, 50,000 young men, almost entirely among the rural population, destitute of means of acquiring such education as their age and calling imperatively demand. I omit mention of females, because unnecessary to my argument. Female education of an equally elevated character must keep pace, however, with that of the male population. Do existing educational institutions afford relief? School officers will admit that the Common Schools, in the main reputable, are often a mere farce. Thousands of the young throw up their books in despair, because they have outstripped their instructors and forego all further advantages of instruction. The great desideratum, the great need is, a chance for the boy to aid himself. While at the Common School, the boy works upon his father's farm. He earns his education as he proceeds. Labor is there honorable, but he can use his physical system to improve his brain in no wider sphere. Tens of thousands crave the chance to 28 labor three or four hours per day, supporting themselves while improving their minds, but no opportunities are afforded. It may be said that High Schools and Academies are accessible, but it is obvious that expense and distance render them unavailable -o the mass. Those who resort to the higher colleges, even to pursue a scientific course of study, become enervated, or at least indifferent to physical toil, and going there at an age when they are most impressible, they are borne along in the irresistible current of opinions and sympathies prevailing there, and not one in fifty becomes a cultivator of the soil. Double, treble, quadruple, the accommodations of existing Universities, and they could receive but a mere fraction of the youth clamoring for education, if any suitable facilities were allowed them to help themselves. A new order of institutions has therefore become an absolute necessity, where a student can, in part at least, educate himself, where his physical faculties are preserved in their full vigor and elasticity, and where those studies which are most useful to a cultivator of the soil shall be embraced, whilst those which are least valuable shall be discarded. To remedy this yawning 29 deficiency, Agricultural and Industrial Colleges are organized in several of the States, and initiatory steps are taken in other States to establish them. The Agricultural College of the State of Michigan has been in actual operation since May 13th, 1857. Its Faculty consists of a President and four Professors, and it has accommodations at present for one hundred students. It was created in obedience to a requisition of the revised Constitution of 1850, and organized under a law of 1855. The farm consists of 676 acres. Its design is to unite physical with mental culture, to afford the student a chance to earn in part his own education, and a chance to apply himself, free of tuition, to those sciences and practical arts that may render him a scientific farmer and an enlightened citizen. The effort has attracted anxious attention throughout the Union. Applications from other States and Canada have been made sufficient to fill the Institution. This is the first State Institution, and the only exclusively Agricultural one yet in operation on this side of the Atlantic. The New York State Agricultural College was incorported in 1853. Its creation was principally due to the energy and public spirit of the late 30 lamented JOHN DELAFIELD, who was chosen its first President. After his death the work was suspended: it was revived in 1856. The farm, embracing 686 acres, was then purchased at a cost of $45,000, principally by subscriptions of the farmers of Seneca county. It is situated on an eligible and commanding position, stretching from the village of Ovid to Seneca Lake. A loan by the State of $40,000 for twenty years, without interest, is secured oni 400 acres of the estate. Instruction in those sciences and arts, calculated to enlighten the farmer and illustrate his calling, is to be combined in its system of education. The Trustees have contracted for the erection of a portion of the main college building, to be completed in one year, for the accommodation of 125 to 150 students. Its available funds for the purpose now consist of $35,000, not so much as the cost of a single school house in many of your towns-a sum in sad contrast with the ostentatious exhibit around us of the Agricultural capacities and wealth of your Empire State. The Peoples' College at Havana, Schuyler county, in this State, was incorporated in 1853, and organized in 1857. Its charter contemplates a capital of $250,000, which may be increased to 31 $500,000, of which enough has been already subscribed to encourage the belief that the experiment will be fairly tested. The corner stone of the main edifice was laid on the 2d day of September last, and the Trustees announce their intention of opening the institution within one year from this time. It should perhaps be designated as an Industrial, rather than an Agricultural, College, for it embraces various kinds of manual labor in its plan, while the farm consists of but 200 acres of land. Labor is to be compulsory on both teacher and student, a plan, if successful, admirably adapted to prepare a new class of Professors, such as new institutions of the age will demand. It contemplates a wide range of study no less, in the language of its charter, than " Literature, Science, Arts and Agriculture." The Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania was incorporated in 1855. It is located nine miles southwest of Bellefonte, in Center county, very near the center of the State, on 200 acres of land, the munificent gift of Gen. JAMES IRVIN. The farm, to which 200 acres have been added by purchase, is being brought rapidly into a high state of cultivation. Its resources consist of $10,000 donated by the State Agricultural Soci 32 ety, $10,000 subscribed by the citizens of Center county, $5,000 a bequest of ELLIOT CRESSON, and $25,000 appropriated by the State. The further sum of $25,000 has been appropriated by the State, on condition that an equal sum be subscribed by citizens. Its whole means, therefore, if the subscription is completed, of which no doubt remains, are $100,000, and the farm donated by Gen. IRVIN, estimated at $12,000. One wing of the main college building is nearly erected, and the present design of the Trustees is to open the institution on the 15th of February next, with one hundred students, to be increased to four hundred. The Maryland Agricultural College was incorporated by the State in 1856, and $6,000 per annum appropriated towards its support, provided subscriptions to the amount of $50,000 were first secured. That object having been effected during the last winter, the institution was organized and the College located on a tract of 428 acres of land purchased at Bladensburg, near Washington, from the estate of Hon. C. B. CALVERT, the largest stockholder, and President of the Board of Trustees. The corner stone of an extensive edifice was laid on the 24th of August last, and the 33 design is to push the work to rapid conclusion. Its educational plan proposes the development of the whole Man-moral, physical, and intellectual. The State Agricultural College of Iowa was incorporated in March last. The preliminary appropriations are $10,000, and five sections of very valuable lands heretofore granted by Congress for erection of Capitol buildings. Localities vie with each other in offers of money or land to secure its location, varying in value from $10,000 to $25,000. It is to be fully organized and located in January next. The Minnesota Agricultural College was incorporated during the present year. It is located at Glencoe, McLeod county. The farm consists at present of 320 acres of land. Its design, scope, and principal features, as well as those of the Iowa College, closely resemble those of the Agricultural College of Michigan. The Agricultural Colleges of Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota, are State institutions. Those of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, are the joint works of public spirited individuals and the respective States. 34 In anticipation of all these efforts, the Farmers' College near Cincinnati, Ohio, under the auspices of F. G. CARY, Esq., and other public spirited gentlemen, has for several years promoted the cultivation of the earth in conjunction with literary and scientific pursuits. It is, however, a classical institution, embracing other objects, and prescribed labor in the culture of the soil is not a compulsory feature of its plan. A bill establishing an Agricultural College is now pending before the Legislature of Ohio, and will probably be reached at its adjourned session the approaching winter. Its friends are not sanguine of its success. Whether it passes or not, the farmers of Ohio have 150,000 sons deprived of all possible means of education beyond the Common School. The Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1856, incorporated a School of Agriculture, which must be dependent entirely on subscriptions for its future establishment. In 1850, Massachusetts, in advance of other States, appointed Commissioners to investigate the subject, and Prof. HITCHCOCK made an elaborate report relative to Agricultural Colleges in Europe. A plan was recommended for Agricultural Education, but no effective action was taken on the subject. Two citizens of Massachusetts, BENJAMIN BUSSEY, of Roxbury, and OLIVER SMITH, of Hatfield, have made princely bequests to be used in some remote future contingencies for founding Agricultural Colleges, but available for no immediate use. Efforts are being made to establish Agricultural Colleges also in Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Wisconsin. Agricultural Professorships have been endowed in the Universities of Virginia and Georgia by public spirited individuals, and also exist in several other of the classical colleges of the country. In Michigan, the University has such a Professorship. Scientific Schools of an elevated character have been connected with many of the older institutions. These will be merged in the several institutions with which they are allied. Superior facilities will be thus afforded for a man already educated to acquire a better knowledge of Agriculture, as an accomplishment, but very little is thus effected towards filling a deplorable hiatus in our educational systems. It will be perceived that the enterprises in this country designed to meet the great necessity, are all in embryo. They are the initial attempts 36 to satisfy an irresistible craving for an additional means of education. In Europe, however, Agricultural and Industrial Colleges are no longer an experiment. The neglect of our government stands in woful contrast to the paternal care exercised by the governments of Europe. We have no Department of Agriculture, not even a Bureau of a department. Our government may expend in ten years, on the whole subject of Agriculture, as much as it would cost to build a first class steam frigate to sail around the world on pleasure excursions, or rot in the docks. The Senate, during the last Congress, abolished its Committee on Agriculture, and thus before the world, ignored the subject. In France the subject is under the charge of the Minister of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works; in Prussia, a Board of Rural Economy, subordinated to the Minister of Agriculture, has control of the subject; in Russia, it is under the supervision of the Minister of Public Domains. The other nations of Europe generally take the subject under governmental patronage and custody. In Prussia, Agricultural Education is perhaps best systematized. Prussia has 413 Agricultural Societies of different grades, all of which are 37 affiliated together, and are subordinate to and report to the Board of Rural Economy. In all Germany there are one thousand more such societies. Prussia supports fifty-one. Agricultural Periodicals. In all Germany there are eightynine such Periodicals. Societies and Periodicals, as well as Schools, are devoted to special objects, bestowing their whole attention to perfecting some single branch of culture. Prussia has five Agricultural Colleges of a high order, twentyeight Elementary Colleges, and fifty-seven Special Schools for affording instruction in horticulture, flax culture, sheep raising, &c., and seventy-two Model and Experimental Farms. But the supervisory functions of the government do not end here. It aids in the dissemination of the best seeds and best machinery for flax culture; it distributes cuttings and seeds of the mulberry, and reeling and other machinery to promote slik culture; it promotes pomological culture in the same efficient manner. So it encourages the propagation of the breeds of horses. Draining engineers are detached to different parts of the kingdom to instruct the people, indicate the proper channels for drainage, and systematize it in the most economical manner. Lessened annual 38 expense of the public roads, improved general health, and increased production of the kingdom, are the ample remunerations to the government. In France there is an Agronomic Institute on a portion of the premises of the Palace of Versailles. There are three Imperial Colleges of Agriculture of a superior kind. There are eightysix lesser schools, one in each of the departments. There are also Polytechnic and Industrial Schools of a somewhat kindred nature. To the three National Veterinary Colleges, I have already alluded. Russia appreciates the importance of stimulating Agriculture as the sure foundation of her prosperity and colossal power. Her efforts are comprehensive and vigorous. The government supplies land for various tests and experiments. Importation of implements free of duty has been allowed. Fairs are held in districts of the empire, and statistics are published at the public expense. Periodicals are published and gratuitously distributed, particularly among the clergy, that they may become missionaries of Agriculture as well as of the Gospel. Special schools are established for rearing of horses and sheep, for culture of flax, silk, &c., and for the study of epidemics among 39 cattle. A garden of an hundred acres was established fifty years ago near Odessa, on the Black Sea, for the acclimation of seeds, fruits and plants of Southern Europe, and subsequently ten other gardens for similar, purposes. Agents are dispatched not only over the empire, but to foreign countries, to obtain information and improvements for dissemination. There is one Imperial College at Gory Goretzk, and eight other colleges are established in different districts of the empire, all well endowed, and each possessing an extensive model farm, the least of which is fifteen hundred acres. In addition to these are numerous Farm Schools. A Technological Institute for education of mechanics, chemists and engineers, is also established. Graduates of the higher institutions have been sent abroad to be better fitted for professors at home. The students in the eight principal colleges are educated entirely at the public expense, and when they graduate are supplied gratuitously with books, seeds and tools; yea more, the most meritorious are supplied with farms near their native villages as rewards for their proficiency. An intelligent Russian informed me that if the schools of Russia had done no other service than the eradication of 40 superstitions and prejudices, their cost was well repaid. Great Britain has established a system of Agricultural Schools for Ireland, but not for the rest of the empire. The principal Agricultural College in England is at Cirencester. It is designed for the gentry only, and is an expensive institution. The question may be asked: Why has England, the foremost country in Agriculture, the fewest schools? The reason is obvious. The landlord, the steward, the man of science, and the tenant farmer who employs the laborers, confer together on all proposed improvements. The landlord has the authority and the capital to execute their resolves. They are the Agricultural College. Thus science, capital and skill are called into requisition; hence the island presents a scene of unrivalled rural beauty, and groans under her abundant productions. Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, Sweden, Wurtemberg, Belgium, and other nations of Europe, earnestly promote Agricultural education. The first institution of the kind in Europe was at Hofwyl in Switzerland, founded by Fellenburg, a name illustrious in the annals of education. The model school, perhaps, of all Europe, is that 41 of Hohenheim in Wurtemberg. The other most remarkable colleges are Cirencester in England, Grignon in France, Moglin in Prussia, and Gory Goretzk in Russia. In 1850, Prof. Hitchcock enumerated three hundred and fifty-two Agricultural Institutions in Europe, but he omitted those of Sweden and some other countries. They have been greatly multiplied since that time. I think there are now five hundred colleges, schools and model farms in Europe, mostly the creation of the last twenty years. Their success is no longer in controversy. Neither prejudice nor ignorance is allowed to crush them. Thy are regarded as a great and beneficent agency, which governments, in the exercise of a benignant guardianship, are bound to exert in increasing the productions of the earth and promoting the welfare of the race. They appreciate the great fact that the surest way to promote the prosperity of the State is to enlighten the individual and multiply his energies. I can only make an approximate estimate, but there are probably employed in all the schools of Europe at the present time two thousand professors and teachers, and fifty thousand students are in attendance upon them. 6 42 I have said nothing relative to the courses of studies, the discipline, or the plans on which the European schools are conducted. It is sufficient to say that the design of them all is a mastery of the physical sciences and practical arts that bear upon Agriculture, and the harmonious union of study with labor. Their institutions, however, furnish no models for us. The lower order of schools in Ireland and Russia are for the peasantry, and of a grade not elevated enough to prove useful in this country. The best of their colleges are designed for the education of stewards, agents and teachers, and not for proprietors who labor with their own hands, and who combine, like our countrymen, all the characteristics of landlord, tenant and laborer in the same man. The objections to such institutions in this country will be numerous, in spite of the necessity for them. The first question asked is, "Do you expect to liberally educate the whole mass?" That is impossible. But a large proportion, ten times as many as now are, can be highly educated. Large numbers can be rendered intelligent citizens, capable of performing all their several duties, and lingering prejudices can be eradicated from their minds. The assumption will be made that if we need one school we need an hundred. That is true. But they are novel-they must be built up gradually. No sufficient teachers can be'obtained. I doubt whether instruction could be had for ten colleges in the whole State of New York. No plans can be thoroughly successful till a new race of men are educated in these very colleges, for professors and teachers. The general objection urged with a singular dogmatism is, that labor and study are incompatible. It is not so in tender boyhood, where the boy actually performs drudgeries while mastering the rudiments. It is not so in mature manhood, where hundreds of men not only labor, but support families, and acquire funds of knowledge while engaged in manual toil. There is a Senator in the Congress of the United States, who was taught to read and write after he was of age, and after he was married. GEORGE STEPHENSON, the great English engineer, began his career as a breakman, married young, and made nearly all of his mental acquisitions while pressed down by crushing labors. Indeed courage, thought, labor and study, severe and unremitting, are the only conditions of lofty success to the mature man. 44 Why then this assumption, that labor and study are incompatible just at the very period of life when the body is most vigorous, and the mind most free from anxiety? It originates in a diseased public opinion. It continues to exist, because no philosophical plan of combining labor and study has had a fair trial. It is true, that Manual Labor Schools have generally been unsuccessful. The cause is evident. They have often withered under the frowns and incredulity of the public. Often the labor selected has been confining and fatiguing toil, by no tie connected with any pursuit in which the heart was enlisted. Often too, labor has been elective, one portion of the students working, while others were exempt. Castes were inevitable from such incongruity, and the death of such an Institution was almost coeval with its inauguration. The Institution in Michigan has been in operation about eighteen months. Labor is there compulsory on all. So far all the labor has been cheerfully performed. Opinion among themselves has a powerful influence in holding each student to a manly performance of all his duties. Generally those who are most faithful in study are foremost in their sports, and foremost in their work also. So, too, fidelity does not depend upon the fact whether a young man comes from town or country, but upon his energy and intrinsic manliness. There is no shrinking from duties, even those which are most offensive and most severe. The farm was located in a forest. Lands have been reclaimed by the students, such as are generally neglected as irreclaimable. For eight months —except students and those in official positions-but a single man, and he the porter of the kitchen, has been regularly employed on the estate. All the repairs in wood are done by the students; clearing and ditching, planting and harvesting have been done by the students; all the teams and stock are in daily charge of the students; a bridge has been laid out and erected by the students. Circumstances, a short time since, deprived us of every. person employed in the culinary department. With the aid of three or four persons, the students performed all the duties connected with that department for more than a fortnight. Had the Institution been deprived of all external aid, the meals would have been well prepared, and punctual as usual, and the spectacle would have been presented, of a College of Students and Professors, entirely 46 self reliant and independent. So far, this is compatibility of labor with study. I recently saw an assumption in a public paper, that if thirty institutions were started for the purpose, and the compatibility of labor and study was established in a single one of them, success would be a full remuneration for the cost of the whole. I would not assume that it is proved in Michigan, but I assume that in spite of most formidable obstacles, it is rapidly being demonstrated. The Instititution has met with trials and misfortunes. It should have been located on land thoroughly subdued, already a model farm. An experiment sure to encounter the numberless difficulties inevitable to all new enterprises, and sure to incur malignant opposition from without, should have been placed where all the labor could be made at once interesting and attractive. As it is, the Institution is compelled to suffer all the risks, toils, trials, and the diseases, this year sweeping and afflictive, of a new country, such as break down the constitutions, crush the spirits and abridge or destroy the lives of the first generation of pioneers. It may therefore yet fail, and prove a disastrous experiment; but the philosophy 47 of the plan, in many vital points, is no less vindicated. Another fact is already established in the Institution, that the student makes more rapid intellectual progress than though he performed no labor at all. The invigoration of body reacts upon the mind, inspiring it with new power. This should be, and proves to be, a natural necessity. It has been urged against such institutions, that they will be mere receptacles of the sons of the rich, sent there to become familiarized with labor and the use of tools. The exact reverse is the primary design. The chief object to be kept in view, is to enlighten the toiler with the truths of science, that the man who works with the hands may think with the brain. In our experience the very class who were destitute of early advantages have sought the Institution most eagerly, and best appreciated its advantages. A system of labor has been harmonized with a system of study. The students are credited with their labor three hours per day, and assessed with their board at cost. The balances are struck each term, and inconsiderable as these balances are, many students have been compelled to leave, and 48 abandon further hope of education, because unable to pay them. We have discovered that great benefits result from attrition and constant discussion among the students. The farmer employed on the estate, before he had been there six months, declared that he would not part with the knowledge he had obtained for a thousand dollars. The continual exercise of mind and comparison of opinions, has disclosed to him the nature of the fatal blunders which young farmers commit, and taught him how they might be shunned. The assumption is made that a man can learn nothing practical in such a school. That depends upon the discipline. Our experience is, that acquisitions are very rapid in this respect; but allow that a young man learned little in mere handicraft, the collateral education will far more than repay the costs. His superior English education, his improved physical capacities, his superior knowledge in regard to food for his family and his stock, and the preservation of health, his general readiness and capacity in mastering business, and executing public trust-all these acquirements are invaluable, and cannot be 49 earned by the exercise of his own faculties in any existing Institution. I met a man last year who exultingly declared that there was but one way to hoe, but one way to plow, but one way to harvest, and books and schools were therefore futile. Fifty years ago, when the traveler was seven or eight days in making a voyage from New York to Albany, in a crazy sloop, there was but one way to travel. Before ARKwRIGHT'S spinning jenny, there was but one way to spin. Before Prof. MAURY published his Theory of Winds and Currents, there was but one way to sail. The voyage from New York to San Francisco, which would formerly have taken six or seven months, has been performed in less than ninety days. Twenty years ago there was but one way to communicate with London, —it took three months. The practicability is now proved of dispatching a message from London after breakfast and have it arrive in New York before daylight. If there is but one way to farm it, that is a very poor way, which affqrds an average crop of less than eleven bushels of wheat per acre over such a country as we possess. This same friend called my attention to a Pennsylvania German, who could hardly read and 7 50 write, and had a great contempt for papers and books on farming, but was the best farmer in his neighborhood. I told him that I thought this basket would not hold water, and that this model farmer owed everything to the spirit of improvement abroad. His plow was a Troy plow, instead of the old shaky implement, with wooden mold board sheathed with iron, with straight handles tipped with cow-horns, which he used when a boy; his implements were mostly light, graceful, elastic ones, of recent patterns; his fruit was budded and grafted from such as his neighbors had imported from the best nurseries. Whatever superior cattle, or sheep, or swine he had, were obtained from neighbors at no extra cost. The nails he shingled his house with cost but one- third as much as those which his father used. When he got up in the morning, he lighted his fire in a second with a friction match, instead of tugging ten minutes with flint and steel and tinder box, and he complacently composed himself to sleep at night under sheeting that cost eight cents per yard, as good as that which cost fifty cents when he was a child. The story is told of Plato, that having described man to be a biped without feathers, Diogenes, the cynic, laid a plucked 51 rooster before him and exclaimed, " Behold Plato's man!" If our model farmer was deprived of all the benefits he had derived from that progress which he despised, if he was stripped of all borrowed plumes, he would be as innocent of feathers as Plato's man. It is objected that graduates will come forth from such colleges crammed with all sorts of visionary notions and theories. The design is to effect the contrary result. It is to teach men to subordinate experience, and books, and speculations, to great natural laws, to learn and acquire the tests by which truth can be sifted from error. Let me illustrate. You will hear men, even at this day, defend the custom of wintering animals under severe exposures, rather than stabling them. It is an established natural law, that vital heat is created by contact of the carbon of the food with the oxygen of the air, existing in the system or inhaled into the lungs, and that the more heat is demanded by exposure, the more waste of the animal, and the more ravenous consumption of food. Natural law, then, as well as economy and humanity, enjoins that cattle should be wintered in clean, comfortable, well ventilated buildings. 52 Experience and argument weigh nothing against t natural law. But I cannot follow these objections further. The earth revolves in its orbit in obedience to law; the stone I throw into the air falls in obedience to law; the circulation of the blood and the operation of the human functions are governed by law; every thing blooms and decays on the surface of the earth, in obedience to immutable laws. It is the province of Science to discover and elucidate those laws-it should be the province of Agricultural Education to master and enforce them. The work before us is a great and significant movement-it may affect the welfare of millions. All that is anticipated by. sanguine men may not be realized. Something may be done to substitute intelligence for ignorance, energy for luck, health for disease, and science for chance. Institutions of the kind may fail-I think many of them will fail. I understand that your own Institution, yet in its infancy, has been subject to calumnies and criticism, calculated to benumb public sympathy and paralyze the energies of its friends. There will always be narrow minded men, who will gloat over every misfor 53 tune, every mistake, and every failure. Nothing short of inspiration will save men from error. But should an hundred Institutions fail, there yet stand your two hundred thousand young men in New York, and eight or ten times as many in the whole Union, panting for education. There they remain with minds to educate, and physical capacities adequate to earning an education, if chances were afforded. No facilities will be provided for meeting a recognized demand of the age. When I say all this, I do not mean to decry the Com-.4 mon School nor the University. "To the end that learning may not perish in the graves of our forefathers, be it ordained that a Free School shall be maintained by every fifty families." Such was that early and significant ordinance of the Pilgrim Fathers, which has performed so invaluable an agency in the promotion of civilization. I was born almost within hearing of the wintry surges that beat upon Plymouth Rock. I was educated in one of the most venerable Institutions of New England, where I could look out from my window, and see that majestic shaft rising upon Bunker Hill, a perpetual monument to the intelligence, as well as the valor and patriotism, of our forefathers; and I shall never cease to appre 54 ciate and defend all those Insitutions of learning which I was taught to cherish around those hallowed spots. But another and an additional agency is now demanded for the education of the new man, whom our political condition has created, in the use and conversion of the new modern physical sciences, to the highest purposes of progress and civilization-a range of study not possible, and never contemplated when the existing University was developed. But it is no holiday business to establish such an Institution as I have forshadowtd. The farm, buildings, laboratory, library, museums, stock and implements, must cost a large sum. It must be carried forward as an important public object, and enlist general sympathy and support. What shall be the chief features of such Institutions, what their matured organization, and what the most eligible course of studies, time must determine. It is with diffidence therefore that I give a mere skeleton. Students for admission should pass a good examination in the branches taught in the best Common Schools. The course of study should extend over a period of four years at least. It should embrace 55 a mastery of the English Language, Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Chemistry, Animal and Vegetable Physiology, Entomology, Botany, Geology, Mineralogy, Meteorology, the Veterinary, Art, Horticulture, Political Ecomony, Constitutional Law, Book Keeping, and the Application of Science to the Mechanic Arts. Testimonials or Diplomas should be given to those who pursue a full course. Tuition should be free to-all, except to those Who do not intend to pursue the life of a farmer, or who enter to remain for a limited period. The Farm should be in as complete a state of preparation for use as the lodging rooms, books, laboratory, or black board. The first Institution in a State should have a full corps of Professors, and the instruction given should be comprehensive and thorough. Institutions should be endowed on a permanent and independent basis, that they may be "good enough for the richest, and cheap enough for the poorest." Impressed with the necessity of more liberal aid than private individuals or capricious State Legislatures would be likely to afford, and feeling that in their infancy they must be independent of popular prejudice or bigoted opposition, earnest friends have looked with confidence to the General Government for adequate grants of the public domain for endowments. It seemed fit that Institutions, the success of which must enure to the national benefit, should be a subject of national encouragement. Accordingly the bill introduced by Mr. MORRILL of Vermont, and sustained by an impregnable array of facts and argument, in a speech delivered by him, and in Mr. WALBRIDGE'S report from the minority of the Committee on Public Lands, passed the House of Representatives at the last session, by a majority of five votes. Seven members of the House from the State of New York voted against it. It now awaits the action of the Senate at the approaching session. The bill proposes to grant to the several States, "for the benefit of Agriculture and and the Mechanic Arts," twenty thousand acres of land for each Senator and Representative to which each State is entitled. Ten per cent. of the grant can be used for the purchase of farms, but none of it can be converted to the erection of buildings. By reference to the latest report of the General Land Office, it appears that we recently possessed 1,088,792,498 acres of unsold o7 public domain. The grant proposed by the bill in question does not amount to two-thirds of one per cent. Can any one doubt that our great landed inheritance would be enhanced in value ten times that per centage, by the creation of a cordon of Colleges throughout the States, where those studies are taught which conspire to render men more enlightened tillers of the soil. From a report in 1854, it appears that an aggregate of 4,060,704 acres of land had been granted to fifteen States of the Union, for the endowment of Universities. More than 60,000,000 of acres have been appropriated to the establishment of Common Schools. It seems to have become the unquestioned policy of the Government to set apart a portion of the public lands as a sacred fund for the education of men, who, and whose posterity, are to inhabit them. Surely if it is a legitimate use of the lands to devote them to the promotion of professional and classical learning, for still more powerful reasons justice and expediency demand a share of them for instruction of men in those sciences and arts which bear directly upon Industrial and especially Agricul-tural pursuits. We support two National Schools for instruction of men in the arts of destruction. 8 8 Let something be done for the support of schools for instruction in the arts of production. Public sentiment seems so irresistable in favor of this measure, that we may rationally hope for its success, and the consequent liberal endowment of one Industrial or Agricultural College at least in each of the States of the Union. Farmers of New York! I trust you will return to your homes impressed deeply with the lessons which this great exhibition of science, industry and skill conveys. It is a great law pervading all life, that like produces like. Let every farmer be stimulated to improve all around him. Let him have the best horses and the best cattle, the best sheep and the best swine, the best wheat and the best'corn, the best fruit and the best vegetables, and the best implements of every kind. Retain the best and live upon it. Sell the poorest-possess nothing which is too good for your own family. Let your homes be the homes of taste as well as the homes of abundance. Plant the orchard that it may rain its abundance at your feet. Let the fragrance of flowers fill the air about your dwellings, and the vine clamber and twine around your doorways. Push away the dingy curtains that hang like a pall over the 59 windows, and throw open that sombre parlor, heretofore used only for weddings and funerals. When the wintry storms begin to rage without, kindle the blazing fire, and let its cheerful glow encourage social intercourse. If addicted to the use of tobacco and strong drinks, abandon them. The money saved in five years would carpet your houses, crowd your shelves with choice books, and adorn your walls with pictures. Thus you will make your homes more attractive to your sons than the tavern, the village, or doubtful associations. Educate all your children, male and female, as thoroughly as your opportunities allow, and retain the most promising at home to cheer, to dignify, and to ennoble your own calling. These are your private and your social duties, but remember that you have wider responsibilities; you have duties to the past, duties to the present, duties to the future. Transmit the share of earth which you have inherited, improved and embellished by your labor and taste. Remember that the character impressed upon this generation molds the future communities who succeed you. The surges of migration westward are pouring on without abatement — 60 "'Multitudes, like which the populous North Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danau, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the South." Every improvement calculated to abridge labor, increases means of subsistence, and multiplies population. Tile Atlantic Telegraph itself "annihilates time and space," brings men into close communion, and invites fresh hordes to our shores from the other hemisphere. That population mingles with our own, and for the character of the blended race and their Institutions, even to the Pacific shores, this generation and this community are in part responsible. Assist to encircle the continent, therefore, not with railroads only, not with telegraphs only, but with all the Institutions and sentiments of a glorious civilization, electric with the vital current of human freedom. And remember that the proud spectacle of an educated people, dominant over the continent, will never be realized, unless some additional means are devised to educate the whole youth of the rural population. When the speaker concluded, Mr. GEDDES, of of Onondaga, arose and said: MR. PRESIDENT-I rise to move a vote of thanks to the speaker; but before you put the question, 61 allow me, as one of the farmers of this county of Onondaga, in behalf of my brethren, to return our thanks to your Society for this your third Exhibition among us. We thank you for giving us the lessons that must be drawn from placing side by side, for comparison, the finest specimens of all the varieties of domestic animals and of the products of the garden and field, as well as for this magnificent display of farm implements which we see before us. This is a State Society, and I know is the instructor of the-whole State; but particularly is it the instructor of the localities that are so fortunate as to again and again witness the great Annual Shows. Allow me to add that your lessons, in Onondaga, have not been entirely lost; the improvement here is manifest in every branch of farming since you held your Fair among us. I can assure the orator, to whom we are about to return our thanks, that the standard he has just held up before us, as showing what a farmer's life should be, if not entirely arrived at here, has nevertheless been approximated. If he will do me the pleasure of riding in my company over these majestic hills and beautiful vallies, I will show him many specimens of high and judicious cultivation, and many a 62 pleasant homestead surrounded with fruits and flowers. And within these houses on the center tables, he shall find elegant and useful books, with the newspapers of the day, and on the shelves many of the standard authors, and in not a few instances some of the ancient classics,-and, Sir, he will find that the women that he will- meet there, will acquit themselves with credit either in the parlor or the dairy. We are trying here to pursue the policy that the orator has indicated in his address, and feel fully the want of knowledge; and with welcome we greet him, when he comes to us with the information, that in Michigan the State has a promising Institution of learning, especially devoted to branches of education that are particularly important to us. May the fullest success attend his College. We are interested in its success. We want knowledge. Who wants it so much as we? We are all our lives communing with nature in her inner temples-whoever shall light them up with science will be our benefactor. Those mysterious laws that in the chemistry of nature extract, by means of the organism of one plant, poison from the same earth that gives to a different plant the most valuable food —we desire 63 to understand. Now, Sir, allow me to offer my resolution: Resolved, That the thanks of the New York State Agricultural Society be given to President WILLIAMS, of the Michigan State Agricultural College, for his eloquent and instructive Address, and that its valuable lessons may be preserved, a copy be requested for publication in the Transactions of our Society.