economics of the household. They should be well versed in pomology, floriculture, bee-keeping, the care of poultry, and other light and suitable branches of agriculture. They should understand the chemical and other changes which milk undergoes during its manufacture into butter and cheese. They should understand structural botany, vegetable physiology, and the various other studies that would enable them in after life to become true counselors and partners in all that pertains to farm life.

PRACTICAL EDUCATION NEED NOT BE RESTRICTED OR SORDID.

A practical education, then, is what the farmer needs. But need it, therefore, be an ignoble, sordid training, whose only end is to fit him the better to grapple with the everrecurring problems of dollars and cents? By no means. On the contrary, it should be, and it may be, such as shall expand his faculties and ennoble his whole being, lifting him up to a plane of intelligence where he can behold, with appreciative eye, the miracles which Nature's hand is working out on every side; where he must first wonder, then by degrees begin to understand and perpetually admire; and where, if of a devout mind, he will soon learn to "look from Nature up to Nature's God."

Is this the kind of education which our farmers' sons and daughters are being furnished, in most of our common schools, to-day? Let us examine this point. How many are

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there who know the power which water has exerted in the earth's history, and still exerts upon the farm every day? that by its action all our stratified rocks were formed? that to its solvent power and chemical action we owe our useful minerals and our metallic deposits? that it is the great mechanical power in nature? that it has moved mountains and filled valleys through its glacial action? or that through its agency our most fertile soils have been deposited over vast areas?

Again, how many know that the sun is the real, moving lifepower upon the earth, and that through the action of its rays upon water we have dew, clouds, fogs, rain, snow, and frost? How many know that the crystalline rocks at the earth's surface contain a greater quantity of water than all the seas and rivers of the globe; that if the conditions surrounding us should change so that the earth would absorb only four thousandths of one per cent. of water more than it now contains, the ocean would disappear, and we should lose not only our moisture, but the atmosphere itself? How many comprehend that it is the sun, after all, which is the great master power that moves all on earth, water being only the agent?

Now, the student in agriculture should understand, for instance, how the agency of water is exerted for the benefit of the farmer; but it is not necessary that he should know every thing which science teaches about water in all its forms and phases. Life is too short for such all-embracing investigations.

Truly, we live in a realm of wonders. Nature's silent operations on the farm are a succession of miracles, until we understand the laws by which she works. Then they become to our wondering minds as simple as they are beautiful, even in their vastness and complexity. The number of tons of water raised by an acre of corn, during its summer's growth,

is simply marvelous. How many farmers understand the processes by which it is accomplished, or can realize the immense measure of force and energy expended by nature in producing his twenty to fifty bushels of corn per acre? How many appreciate the important fact that it is in his power to assist nature in economizing a portion of this vast force, by enabling her to produce ten, twenty, thirty bushels more of grain per acre than his land now yields? Hardly one in a thousand; and why? Simply because they have never been educated to their calling-have never been taught to use their senses aright; to store their minds with useful, expansive knowledge; or to reason from cause to effect, and from effect back to cause.

"IN THE SWEAT OF THY BROW."

Since ninety-nine out of every one hundred men and women have to earn their living by actual labor, is it not better that they know something about that business in its several departments, rather than to know all about some one particular department? It is this knowing something of many things that makes the practical man; the knowing all about some one or two special things, the scholar. This knowledge comes slowly, as gray hairs grow, to a thinking What we want is to hasten the ripening of this practical knowledge among the masses, through schools especially devoted to the departments of science relating to agriculture and other industrial pursuits.

man.

A man may be a good chemist and botanist; may understand the anatomy and structure of animals, with their diseases and the remedies necessary to their cure; may understand the nature and composition of soils-all these without being a farmer; nevertheless, if a farmer, he can not have studied the several branches in their bearings upon

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agriculture without being a much better one therefor. Afterward, if he chooses to make a specialty of any one of the sciences, what should hinder? He has the foundation to work on, if he so desire. On the other hand, those whose means might allow them to spend a longer time would necessarily want a different curriculum. To the one class of students the classics would not be beneficial; to the other, they would be necessary, as enabling them to pursue their higher studies more surely.

I believe the time is coming when our industrial schools and agricultural colleges will begin to educate just where the other schools leave off; that is, if the student comes for from one to four years, with an ordinary English education to begin with, he will be pushed in those branches that will make it possible for him as an agriculturist, to comprehend science enough to enable him to work understandingly, and still pursue his studies by a course of reading thereafter. Meanwhile, the life student in agriculture having time, brains, and means to take a higher and wider range, will climb from science to science, and become in turn a teacher to others.

It is for some such system as this that the life-long workers in organizing Education to the Industries have been insisting. Have they succeeded? Only in a measure. But let us be thankful for what we have gained, and still press forward.

By the system that I have outlined there will be trained an army of students, who, when they have finished their education, instead of despising the labors of the farm, will glory in the fulfillment of the great command-far less a curse than blessing-which says, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread." Theirs, also, will be the power to gain a juster appreciation of the power and majesty of

nature in her manifold workings; a boon denied to those whose aspirations rise no higher than the mere drudgery of labor, where all are the abject slaves of toil, and the whole of life consists of one dull, ever-recurring routine of eating, drinking, working, and sleeping.

THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION.

While it is altogether right for the people to demand that the schools specially endowed for education to the industries shall accomplish some good to the present generation, and to the masses in that immediately succeeding ours, and while they not only ask, but continue to insist upon this, they will not deny as high educational facilities to the Agricultural Colleges as exist anywhere else on the broad earth. They do well not to compromise the claim that this new education, which advanced educators and the press have said would revolutionize the world, shall be carried out faithfully to its legitimate results.

The future of industrial education must be that the student shall be made as thorough as possible, in the rudiments that shall best assist him in after life to earn his broad, by the application of certain knowledge pertaining to the particular industry which he follows. The accomplishment of this end must be one of the persistent objects aimed at in the movement now in progress to disenthrall the masses from the power of monopolies.

Since the act of Congress granting lands for the endowment of Agricultural Colleges, we have seen the persistence with which existing colleges have sought to absorb this fund, that the power might remain with themselves. They have told wild stories that science, if not tempered with the old dogmas, would overturn society and bring the earth back