THE AMERICAN FARMER. 45 



If thcrG is any truth in books, (and what are books on agri- 

 culture but a series of the most careful experiments with their 

 results accurately noted ?) farmers would thus advance their 

 own interest, do their country a service, and I doubt not, in 

 every way improve their own character. Truly, it is a pitiful 

 thing to see one of your anti-book, anti-improvement farmers, 

 with his many acres poorly tilled and poorly fenced ; with his 

 old shaky barn, the wind whistling through its ample cracks and 

 knot-\ioles ; with his cattle, their coats rough and staring, cov- 

 ered with their own dung, looking half-perished with the cold ; 

 vainly endeavoring, with scant labor and poor, exhausted manure, 

 robbed of all its fertilizing qualities by long exposure to sun, 

 wind and rain, to make the old farm produce even as much as 

 it did in his good father's time ; with his corn patch always a 

 corn patch, and his mowing land always mowing land ; with, it 

 is most probable, a mortgage on the old place which he is vainly 

 endeavoring to discharge, — when you know what your " com- 

 mon-sense, practical, anti-book friend could do, were he once 

 thoroughly convinced that ' there are more things in heaven and 

 earth than are dreamed of in his philosophy.' " 



But, perhaps he will not part Avitli any of his ancestral acres. 

 Well, I honor him for the feeling. He who cannot part with a 

 thing because it was his father's, who will not sell an inch of the 

 old farm on which he was l)orn, cannot be a bad man. On the 

 contrary, he must be, and you will always find him virtuous, 

 kind and honorable. To him I would say, take a few bushels 

 of acorns, walnuts and chestnuts, and plant them over your 

 superfluous acres. It will not cost much, and your children 

 will thank you for doing it. 



Have you ever considered how our forests are vanishing before 

 the ravenous steam-horse and the ship-builder, and calculated 

 how long it would take to despoil New England of this, her 

 most ornamental as well as useful feature, so that it will not be 

 recognized by our children as the same land they read of, as 

 known to their fathers ? It is a sad thought that our lovely 

 groves and magnificent forests, that every old oak which has 

 served as a land-mark: for generations, all are falling before the 

 power of money ? "A tree in full leaf," says Lord Bacon, " is 

 a nobler object than a king in his coronation robes." 



I would then appeal to you not only to be less wasteful of 



