INFLUENCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL PRESS. 399 



thoughts and practices — and what a heap these practical farmers 

 know when you get at it — is at one and the same time holding 

 communication wjth the best farmers in the country, is talking to 

 an audience the magnitude of which would frighten him did he 

 see it around his fireside, and spreading knowledge and informa- 

 tion in a way that is sure to be like good seed sown on good 

 ground. Aftd I urge every farmer who wishes to benefit his 

 fellow workmen, and at the same time acquire a discipline that 

 will be of immense advantage to himself, to make a constant 

 practice of communicating his thoughts to some agricultural 

 journal. It has been by the accumulation of such articles that 

 our positive agricultural knowledge has widened and deepened. 

 Experiences recorded by practical men have' been of great assist- 

 ance in aiding the establishment of some fact of great importance 

 in our agriculture, and the common observation of close students 

 of nature have assisted the patient investigations of men learned 

 in the sciences, who by elaborating these isolated statements and 

 notes of experience concerning the practical matters of farm life, 

 have been able to produce treatises that have been of vast benefit 

 to the world, and of special use to reading, thinking farmers. 

 And, speaking with a pretty close knowledge of the agricultural 

 papers of this country and England, I am led to declare that the 

 department of correspondence in our farming journals is gen- 

 erally the most interesting feature of these papers, and usually 

 the portion first read. Few readers, I imagine, care little about 

 the opinions of an editor, and when they do ask his advice or seek 

 his counsel it seems to me it is because they like to have their 

 opinions backed up by some one else, even if he don't know any 

 more than they — but there is a real interest in what a farmer says 

 himself, that somehow has a greater value to farming readers than 

 the most brilliant leader — if brilliant leaders are ever found in an 

 agricultural paper. That farmer who places on record in a 

 fanner's paper one useful fact gained in his own experience, or by 

 a single failure in any particular operation saves another from 

 meeting the same result — is as truly a public benefactor, in kind 

 if not in degree, as those whose names illuminate the pages of 

 history for their benevolent deeds. 



When the Ivenxebec Farmer was established — a little seven by 

 nine sheet as you sec it — there was but one other agricultural paper 

 in New England and but six in all North America. The united 

 circulation of these papers could not possibly have been over 



