AGRICULTURAL HEAD-WORK. 23 



carefully, than bo annually disappointed in his crop, though a 

 division of labor would be better. 



This separate work of honestly raising seeds for the market, 

 according to the well-known principles which regulate all 

 reproductive life, is an enterprise which invites the attention of 

 neat and patient cultivators. It should be a business by 

 itself, and it will be one quite certain to yield an abundant 

 remuneration as soon as it is well established. The success 

 which has attended the Shakers in their purpose to supply the 

 markets, and their failure to keep up, with all integrity of pur- 

 pose, the original value of some of this kind, is the guarantee 

 of what may be done by others, or by them, on a different 

 basis. Indeed, I am not sure but that its great importance is 

 such, and the facility so certain, that seed raising might well 

 be made a principal object at the State Farm ; the labor upon 

 which, would tlius innuediately and profitably lift husbandry 

 to a better position, by insuring a truer quality to its seed- 

 raised products. 



But out of the same attention will proceed, not only the 

 preservation of varieties, in their present full value, but also 

 the second obligation, which is more interesting and inviting, 

 namely : the invention of new ones. Mechanical enterprise 

 has generally claimed this word, and ingenuity and inventive 

 genius have been chiefly accredited to its demands. In the 

 science of agriculture, the ordinary husbandman, unfamiliar 

 with the methods of scientific analysis, cannot well achieve 

 much. But in the art of husbandry, that is, in the combina- 

 tions of recognized principles and material forces, or properties, 

 habits of practical observation are the main dependence. And 

 the farmer is the very man, in this way to invent a new fruit or 

 a new vegetable. 



Nature is strikingly apt at helping nearly every effort in this 

 direction. Her accidental combinations, or hybridizations, are 

 oftentimes very valuable. Our best apples and pears, and 

 nearly all desirable vegetables, are instances of this. I have 

 spoken in another connection, of the vast improvement in 

 quality already begotten by this means. It is rather humiliat- 

 ing to man's asserted dominion over the life below him, that 

 he has had very little to do with acquirhig a title to some of 

 the best products of his orchard, garden and field. 



