674 



land, in a fit of despondency, for lialf price, and returns to the village 

 or city and endeavors to replenish his empty j^urse by selling tape, or 

 .some other honorable occupation — a sadder, perhaps not a vpiser man. 

 And the neighbors shrug their shouldei's and exclaim, " so much for 

 scientific farming!'' 



But now I ask seriously, is this scientific farming ? Would it be 

 even scientific shoe-making ? Suppose a man should read all that can 

 be found in cyclopedias, upon the process of making shoes, and should 

 then, without practice, without familiarizing himself with the knife, the 

 thread and the awl, with newspaper spread out before him, betake him- 

 self to the manufacture of boots and shoes. Would it be strange if his 

 coverings for the feet were more imperfect than a savage's moccasins or 

 a Laplander's snow shoe. And if science alone will not teach us how 

 to make a shoe, how can it qualify us for the complicated and varying 

 duties involved in cultivating a farm ? Farmers themselves must be 

 scientific, and theory must be instructed by practice. Good suggestions 

 must be examined and tested b}' practical men. 



Another fact which has unjustly brought scientific farming into dis- 

 repute with many, is the inevitable failures and disappointments which 

 all experimentalists must occasionally meet. 



Suppose a farmer, according to the true principles of exact science, 

 should obtain an accurate analysis of the soil of a certain field, and 

 should find it deficient in a certain substance necessary to make it a 

 good wheat growing soil, and so far as the chemists could perceive, in 

 one substance only, and that he procure that substance and mingle it 

 with the soil and then sow wheat, but instead of obtaining such a crop 

 as he expected, the growth proves a j>erfect failure and he can see no 

 benefit whatever from the means he has employed, shall he therefore 

 peremptorily decide against all scientific farming, and pronounce all 

 analysis of soils a humbug ? How many eftbiis was Fulton compelled 

 to make before he succeeded in constructing a steamboat, that should 

 walk over the waters like a living thing ! And how many were ready 

 to jeer at him and pronounce him a maniac at every successive feilure 

 before his final triumphal success ? How many efibrts was Morse com- 

 pelled to make, and how many long and patient experiments were tried 

 in the laboratory, before he succeeded in constructing a simple apparatus, 

 by which men between whom the diameter of the world intervenes can 

 convei-se with each other as next door neighbor ? 



