And more than this: Michigan, although but recently settled, and one of the youngest in the great sisterhood of States, has been the first to establish a professional school for the agricultural education of her sons, in which is not only taught the sciences and their application to agriculture, but also agriculture as an art, with such experiments as are calculated to impart a more thorough and practical knowledge of the same; and connected with the study of these a department of manual labor; the legitimate effect of all which is to increase the student's desire for knowledge as well as his love of study, and to remove the barrier too often existing between the educated and laboring classes--which can only be done by giving a better education to those who labor, and by removing the prejudices of the educated against labor. But I propose to speak more definitely of the aims and objects of this Institution, as well as its claims to the favor and support of the farmers of Michigan. They need not be told, I think, that its design is to promote their benefit. But have the farmers of this State, as a class, heretofore recognized this fact? And have they in return for the advantages which it proposes to them, given it that countenance and encouragement which it claims at their hands? I fear not. There are, it is true, noble exceptions to this; yet it is also true that a large proportion of their number have looked upon it with suspicion and distrust, as though its purpose was to do them a wrong--to inflict upon them an evil. They have not merely withheld from it their aid and support, but their active influence has too often been exerted to its disadvantage and prejudice. This is certainly wrong--very wrong! Let us look a little into this matter. Is knowledge--a knowledge of those sciences which are intimately connected with agriculture as an art--of no value to the farmer? Is it necessary that he should be a dolt in order to be fitted for his vocation? Will ignorance and bad husbandry increase his crops or enable him to find a better market for his products? Or, will his enjoyment, in his daily round of toil, be any greater because unconscious that he is groping his way along in the dark? No! For however that may have been in the past it is certainly not the case now. And although "ignorance," as it is said, may be "bliss," yet in these days, at least, it must be a sort of negative bliss.