AGRICULTURAL HEAD-WORK. 15 



AGRICULTURAL HEAD-WORK. 



From an Address before the Middlesex Society, Sept. 30, 1856. 



BY A. R. POPE. 



No form of labor invites so freely, or repays so promptly, tlie 

 head-work of the laborer, as agriculture. Nature does not 

 reveal her secrets, or declare her processes unquestioned ; but 

 to keen intelligence, she constantly offers something new and 

 valuable. 



There are always likely to be two classes of farmers, as there 

 are two classes of mechanics, and lawyers, and ministers ; 

 those who only move in one direction, and never allow them- 

 selves to leave the ruts which their sires' or their grandsires' 

 operations -"wore, and those who continually have an eye to the 

 immense advantage which may be derived from constantly 

 pressing inquiry out into the unknown, and seldom fail to 

 bring home daily, or yearly, some new gain either in the extent 

 of knowledge, or in its application to the labors which are to 

 be performed. The former farm only for a living ; and potatoes 

 at one dollar a bushel are a better crop, no matter how inferior 

 their quality, tlian the best of potatoes at only fifty cents a 

 bushel ; the others, without neglecting any thing which will 

 inure to their positive benefit, yet see in agricultural pursuits 

 something which will help the mental powers to expand, so that 

 the hardest toils may be studded all over with the springing 

 germs of intelligent thought. 



Reduced to its simplest statement, the object of farming 

 arrangements is to yield sustenance of various kinds for animal 

 life. But this object implies something more than planting and 

 reaping. The Indian, who had neither plough nor spade, 

 planted his maize upon the surface, scraped a few rotted leaves 

 and a small quantity of the virgin soil over it, wxnt on his 

 hunting errand, and came back in due time to a fair harvest. 



