402 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



likely representative to the General Court. The farmer of to-day 

 demands that his newspaper should be r>ot a text-book, but a 

 repository of the experiences and practices of our best farmers 

 and farm writers; not a guide to be implicitly followed, but a 

 storehouse of models where farmers of different views engaged in 

 different specialties may find copies or plans upon which they can 

 improve ; not a vehicle for trundling the pet theories of an editor, 

 but for carrying to its readers the views and opinions of practical 

 men engaged in the various industrial pursuits ; not a body of 

 formal essays, but a record of progress in agricultural matters, a 

 bulletin of what is going on among farmers, of what they are 

 duing to elevate and improve their occupation, and a medium of 

 communication between them. Nor should any agricuitural paper 

 ever attempt to leach farming. For the editor of any paper to set 

 himself up as a schoolmaster and say to his readers just what 

 they shall do and how they shall do it, is the veriest nonsense. 

 Every intelligent, reading, observing farmer would distrust such 

 teaching the moment it was attempted. He would say ; "A 

 pretty fellow this editor, to tell me what I must do ; don't I know 

 how to plant corn, and dig muck and make beef ?" And true 

 enough, don't he ? Such are the men who comprehend at once 

 ^what a farmer's paper should be, and are those most likely to be 

 benefitted by it. The richer a paper is in hints and suggestions, 

 the less it attempts to teach, and the more it endeavors to draw 

 out from its readers what they know, the more successful it will 

 become, and the more completely will it fill its appropriate place. 

 Men who have ample leisure to write in a learned, exhaustive 

 manner, who investigate a subject for weeks and it may be months 

 before attempting to arrange their material in proper form for 

 publication — have frequently underrated the labors of editors and 

 correspondents of the press by characterizing their efforts as 

 diffuse, erroneous or hastily prepared. But it seems to me the 

 objection cannot be sustained. The editorial articles in the lead- 

 ing agricultural journals will compare favorably in point of value 

 and ability with any treatise on any branch of agriculture by any 

 American or foreign writer with which I am acquainted. Indeed, 

 I claim for those in my profession, in this country — with few 

 exceptions — that they are men of acknowledged ability, of 

 scientific attainments, and writers of considerable prominence. 

 Moreover, I maintain that the labor involved in editing a good 

 farm journal is as creditable as that involved in the preparation 



