o
population, under an Act passed Feb. 22, 1840. (Stat. 1840, Chap. 7.)
This act was repealed by an act passed Feb. 8, 1841. (Stat. 1841, chap.
17, Sec. 2.)

[8] Distributed among the cities and towns, according to the number of
persons in each between the ages of four and sixteen years. (Stat. 1841,
chap. 17, Sec. 2.)

[9] Distributed among the cities and towns, according to the number of
persons in each between the ages of five and fifteen years. (Stat. 1849,
chap. 117, Sec. 2.)

A SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

[An Address before the Barnstable Agricultural Society, Oct. 8, 1857.]

In the month of February, 1855, a distinguished American, who has read
much, and acquired, by conversation, observation, and travels in this
country and Europe, the highest culture of American society, wrote these
noticeable sentences: "The farmers have not kept pace, in intelligence,
with the rest of the community. They do not put brain-manure enough into
their acres. Our style of farming is slovenly, dawdling, and stupid, and
the waste, especially in manure, is immense. I suppose we are about, in
farming, where the Lowlands of Scotland were fifty years ago; and what
immense strides agriculture has made in Great Britain since the battle
of Waterloo, and how impossible it would have been for the farmers to
have held their own without!"[10]

It would not be civil for me to endorse these statements as introductory
to a brief address upon Agricultural Education; but I should not accept
them at all did they not contain truth enough to furnish a text for a
layman's discourse before an assembly of farmers.

Competent American travellers concur in the opinion that the Europeans
generally, and especially our brethren of England, Ireland, and
Scotland, are far in advance of us in scientific and practical
agriculture. This has been stated or admitted by Mr. Colman, President
Hitchcock, and last by Mr. French, who has recently visited Europe under
the auspices of the National Agricultural Society.

There are good reasons for the past and for the existing superiority of
the Old World; and there are good reasons, also, why this superiority
should not much longer continue. Europe is old,--America is young. Land
has been cultivated for centuries in Europe, and often by the same
family; its capacity tested, its fitness or unfitness for particular
crops proved, the local and special effects of different fertilizers
well known, and the