make of it simply a means of giving farmers' sons such an education as they could obtain by living on a wellmanaged farm and attending an ordinary high school. It must be made the means of a positive increase of human knowledge in the departments bearing on agriculture and manufactures, and the medium of teaching not only farmers, but those who shall become teachers and improvers of the art of farming.

Such an institution should have ample lands for experimental purposes, and even on a moderate scale of completeness should embrace the following distinct professorships:

1. Mathematics pure, and applied to Surveying, Levelling, &c.

2. Drawing and Design.

3. General Physics and Meteorology.

4. Mechanics and Engineering, especially as applied to agricultural machinery and processes, to rural architecture, road making, &c.

5. General and Agricultural Chemistry.

6. Chemical Analysis, especially as applied to soils, manures and products.

7. Botany and Vegetable Physiology.

8. Zoology and Animal Physiology, including breeding of animals, their diseases and treatment. 9. Geology and Mineralogy.

10. Practical Husbandry, with superintendence of model farms.

In many of these departments one or more assistants, or sub-professors, would be necessary, and the whole corps of instructors could hardly fall short of twenty.

The Central School of Arts and Manufactures" in France, counts forty professors and teachers. "The Conservatory of Arts and Trades" has a number not inferior, and has also three subordinate, or auxiliary, colleges in the Provinces. The "Polytechnic School of Vienna" has fifty-eight instructors.

The excellent and elaborate report of Professor Hitchcock, printed in 1851 with our legislative documents of that year [House Doc., No. 13,] comprising the results of his learned researches and survey of the agricultural institutions of Europe, assigns six professors, as "the smallest number of professors with which an institution could be respectable and useful, even at its commencement. The number is much less than it is at nearly all the higher agricultural seminaries in Europe. There it ranges from eight to twenty." The following pregnant suggestion, looking forward to an institution of wise and liberal breadth and of true public economy, like that which the language of our Act of Congress indicates,

illustrates the comprehensiveness as well as the carefulness in observation, of this report:

"By the addition of a single professorship of technology to such an institution as has been described, and extending the collection of instruments to those of every art, this school might become a school of sciences, as well as of commerce and manufactures, and thus afford an education to the son of the mechanic and merchant, as well as the farmer."

The time of each of these professors need not be exclusively devoted to the school, but a thorough exhibition of the sciences in their relations to mechanics and agriculture is impossible without the aid of men of the highest talents, each giving himself specially to one of the departments of science besides the aid of men of high acquirements taking charge of the practical departments enumerated.

Such men, masters in these departments, are rare, or, if found, are already bound by various obligations to other objects or other institutions. If our Commonwealth is to retain her wonted place in noble works, we must seize, at the earliest opportunity, upon as many men of this character as may be found in the country, and at once organize our institution, to be a model for other States that may avail themselves of grant from Congress. Not only a laudable State

the

pride demands this, but the highest considerations of patriotism and philanthropy demand it.

The Act of Congress does not make provision sufficient for an Agricultural School of the highest class in each State. Nor would it be possible now to find, disconnected from our colleges and universities, as many men of high talent, and otherwise competent, as would be required to fill the chairs of one such school. But Massachusetts already has, in the projected Bussey Institution, an agricultural school, founded, though not yet in operation, with a large endowment, connected also with Harvard College and the Lawrence Scientific School. She can therefore, by securing the grant from Congress, combining with the Institute of Technology and the Zoological Museum, and working in harmony with the college, secure also for the agricultural student for whom she thus provides, not only the benefits of the national appropriation, but of the Bussey Institution and the means and instrumentalities of the Institute of Technology, as well as those accumulated at Cambridge. The benefits to our State, and to our country, and to mankind, which can be obtained by this co-operation, are of the highest character, and can be obtained in no other way. The details of the connection of the Bussey Institution with the Scientific School and the College, are not yet

fully wrought out; but I apprehend that little difficulty would be found in connecting it also with the grant from Congress, if the gentlemen who may be intrusted by the State with the work, will approach it with the perception of the absolute necessity for husbanding our materials, both men and money, and concentrating all our efforts upon making an institution worthy of our age and of our people. Its summit must reach the highest level of modern science, and its heads must be those whom men will recognize as capable of planning a great work, and of working out a great plan.

The fifth chapter of the Constitution of Massachusetts, celebrates the wisdom of our ancestors, who "so early as the year 1636, laid the foundation of Harvard College, in which University many persons of great eminence have, by the blessing of God, been initiated in those Arts and Sciences which qualify them for public employments both in Church and State," reciting that "the encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion, and the great benefit of this, and the other United States of America." And it declares that it "shall be the duty of Legislatures and Magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the inter