The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1885-05-13
Connecticut Agricultural Report.

Connecticut Agricultural Report.
Again, for the eighteenth time, we are
in receipt of Secretary Colds always
able and carefully edited Annual Re-
port of the Connecticut Board of Agri-
culture. Connecticut is not chiefly an
agricultural state, but Gs it for that
reason?) the cause of agriculture has
the strong and constant support of the
state legislature, and funds are pro-
vided for an efficient and effective
board of agriculture-with first-class
secretary, who is kept in office right
along; well-equipped experiment sta
tion-with the ablest agricultural chem
list in America at its head, and has now,
in the Storrs Agricultural School, the
beginnings of a system of agricultural
education starting, not in imitation or
emulation of literary schools, but on
basis of practical teaching, illustrated
by practical work on good farm, and
so managed that the sons of poor men
can go there and study as long as they
want to, with chance to work their
way This is the only plan that an
swers the want for agricultural educa-
ton in feasible manner. The agri-
cultural " college" blazed the way to
failure when it took that name, and
tried to go through the antiquated
formulas of institutions designed for
very different purposes. When they
drop all that monkeying nonsense, turn
their eyes and their minds to the work
in hand, and to the means for doing it,
we shall have start in agricultural ed
ucation that will not have to live life
of beggary on one hand to the legisla-
ture for funds, and on the other hand
to the farmers for pupils. An agricul-
tural school must be mainly self-sup-
porting, and it can be made so only by
combining classroom teaching in the
forenoon with effective practical work
on the farm in the afternoon. No boy
who spends four years in the physical
inactivity of the average college stu
dent will ever make farmer. These
four years are the years for hardening
the bones, strengthening the tendons
and toughening the muscles, and if
this is neglected for book-study, the
farmer is spoiled, no matter how good
the teaching may be.
We will not undertake to make re-
view of the good things in this report,
but we may mention among its con-
tents, as specially valuable, Professor
Chamberlain's lecture on Thorough
Farming" the careful paper by Pro-
fessor Atwater (the young Vermonter
whom we hope to see at the head of a
Vermont experiment statiOn) on The
Chemistry of Foods" Samuel Stones
remarks on "Cruelty to the Horse"
Mr.. Wakeman's discussion of the ques-
ton, Can We in New England Ex-
pect to Compete with Farmers in Other
Parts of the Country?" Mr. Fairchild' IS
Experiments with Fertilizers" Mr..
Whitehead's History of the Grange "
(there is great grange revival going
on in the old Nutmeg State), Professor
Brewers "Sanitation on the Farm
Mr.. Hubbard's" Ownership of Land"
Mr.. Augur's &" Report on Pomology,"
and various other most interesting mat.
tiers, all of which deserve careful read
ing and study.
Appended to the Board Report is the
Report of the Experiment Station,
which is also issued separately, and
has been already noticed in these col
umns. Altogether it is plain that ne
state is doing better work than Con
necticut for the promotion of profitable
agriculture. The old state has got the
men, the money, the brains and thu
disposition to improve, get out of thu
old ruts and on to the iron road o
progress in agriculture, as in all thing
else. Vermont is, to a great extent
the child of Connecticut, and shoul,
follow her example.