58 ^AtN'E STAtfi SOCIfiTY> 



duties of daily farm life. I do not by any means assUmc tliat 

 these are fidl or satisfactory answers to the many ar<?ument3 

 adduced in favor of such an institution; nor am I prepared to 

 say positively that it may not be the best means for attaining 

 required information. 1 only present them as some of the si"-^ 

 nificant objections which naturally occur to mind. 



On the other hand, the best attested mode of supplying these 

 Wants, and in our opinion, really the most practicablCj is the 

 proper circulation and attentive perusal of agricultural and 

 horticultural journals, documents, treatises, and statistical tables, 

 together with regular meetings among farmers of a social and 

 conversational as well as business character. A very large 

 proportion of the improvements which have already occurred 

 We may safely refer to the first of these means. They have 

 proved that " book-farming " is not merely an idle and expen^ 

 sive amusement for confiding, retired gentlemen, but the cheap= 

 est and most productive mode of cultivating the land. They 

 have served, also, to arouse the farmer to a just sense of his 

 rights; to the necessity of a sound education, and to the import- 

 ance and nobility of his vocation. A vocation wiiich has won 

 the attention, and beautified the lives of some of the noblest 

 men in history— -^a vocation, the charm of Which ever present to 

 his mind, fragrant with the purer memory of early days, brigliter 

 than all his plans, sweeter than all his triumphs and his joys, 

 has been potent enough to lure many a man of business away 

 from the crowded, weary, though successful paths of mercantile 

 life, many a man of laborious, 'professional duties, away from 

 their exacting but remunerative demands, to the fresh fields, 

 the bud and bloom and beauty of the country— »a vocation which 

 like the mild lustre of the evening star has ofttimes cheered as 

 well as illumined the twilight days of life. They have done 

 more to place farmers on an equality with other classes of men 

 than all other causes combined, for they have proved that as an 

 independent class it has its own rights to maintain, and its own 

 influence to wield. So that i)oliticians have confessed their 

 utter inability of subduing in the usual way the honest sentiments 

 of the rural districts. 



In the department of horticulture, the journals have within 

 the last fifteen or twenty years effected a most radical change, 



