alf years, according to the qualification of the pupil at the outset.
He appears an hour each day at the blackboard, where he shares the drill
of a class, and where he acquires a facility of illustration, command of
language, an address and thorough consciousness of real knowledge, which
are of more value, in many cases, as you know, than almost any amount of
simple acquisition. He also attends, on an average, about one lecture a
day throughout the year. During the remaining time he is occupied with
experimental work in the laboratory or field.

"The great difficulty with students of agriculture, who might care to
come to the Scientific School, is the expense of living in Cambridge. If
some farmer at a distance of three or four miles from college, where
rents for rooms are low, would open a boarding-house for students of
agriculture in the Scientific School, where the care of a kitchen garden
and some stock might be intrusted to them, and where a farmer's plain
table might be spread at the price at which laborers would be received,
we might hope that our facilities would be taken advantage of on a
larger scale. As it is, but few, comparatively, among our students, come
to qualify themselves for farming."

I should, however, consider the arrangements proposed as temporary, and
finally to be abandoned or made permanent, as experience should dictate.

It may be said, I think, without disparagement to the many distinguished
and disinterested men who have labored for the advancement of
agriculture, that the operations of the government and of the state and
county societies have no plan or system by which, as a whole, they are
guided. The county societies have been and are the chief means of
influence and progress; but they have no power which can be
systematically applied; their movements are variable, and their annual
exhibitions do not always indicate the condition of agriculture in the
districts represented. They have become, to a certain extent, localized
in the vicinity of the towns where the fairs are held; and yet they do
not possess the vigor which institutions positively local would enjoy.

The town clubs hold annual fairs; and these fairs should be made
tributary, in their products and in the interest they excite, to the
county fairs. Let the town fairs be held as early in the season as
practicable, and then let each town send to the county fairs its
first-class premium articles as the contributions of the local