TRANSACTIONS. 39 



suggestions of improvements worth adopting, or at least 

 testing, by us. 



England will not occupy a conspicuous place in my 

 sketches, because from the general similarity of her soil, 

 climate, natural productions, political, civil, and religious 

 institutions to those of the Free States of the American 

 Union, and our community of origin and character, there is 

 a corresponding similarity in our agriculture, domestic ar- 

 chitecture and rural economy. Both the objects and the 

 processes of agricultural labor are substantially the same, 

 Indian corn being almost the only important crop not com- 

 mon to English husbandry and our own. 



The agriculture of the two countries is differenced in. 

 degree, not in kind. There, the farms are larger, the fields 

 broader and better drained, the tillage more thorough, the 

 crops cleaner and more abundant, the habitations and ad- 

 jacent grounds neater, the roads better graded and more 

 smoothly kept, the horsey and cattle in finer condition and 

 more highly bred, all showing the presence of larger capi- 

 tal, and a constitutional, or at least habitual, tendency in 

 ■ the land-holder to look more to ultimate results, and less 

 towards immediate returns, than with us. 



Doubtless in all this we may find much to imitate, but 

 since, as I have already said, not only the objects but the 

 processes of agriculture are substantially the same as in 

 our northern and middle States, our curiosity is less pow- 

 erfully stimulated than in countries where the climate, the 

 soil, the crops, the modes of tillage, and all the habits of 

 rural life, are more diverse from our own, and we are less 

 likely to be impressed with advantages resulting merely 

 from increased care and fidelity in familiar operations, than 

 with those which flow from novel methods, and the pursuit 

 of new branches of husbandry. 



On the European continent, on the contrary, we enter 

 at once on a climate, a soil, a class of industrial pursuits 

 quite different from those with which American experience 



