98 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



and care of manures. They throw every thing out of the barn 

 window and let it lie, as was customary twenty years ago, to be 

 drenched by the rains which wash out all the soluble and most 

 vakial)le parts, and carry them away, or to be parched by the 

 sun which sets free many of the rich gases, and sends them flying 

 away into the air to be caught again by the rains and carried 

 down upon the fields of other men, while they are lost forever 

 to the owner of the mass of bulky material from which they 

 started. Why should you call such men practical farmers, any 

 more than you would call a mechanic who failed to keep his 

 tools and stock in order, and consequently did poor work, a good 

 practical mechanic ? 



Not long since, I rode through a strictly farming district, and 

 in the space of about eight miles I counted nearly twenty barns 

 all smirched up around the windows as if somebody had been 

 trying to draw an outline map in water colors, directly under 

 the troughless eaves. Twenty years ago, this was a very com- 

 mon sight, as I well remember ; but since then, science has 

 taught what chemical changes take place in the manure heap, 

 and the loss from exposure ; and though at first only here and 

 there an individual took the hint and economized labor and 

 money by building a barn cellar, yet the leaven began to work, 

 and in time the whole lump will probably be leavened, though 

 it may never admit its indebtedness to the source of the origi- 

 nal leaven. 



I do not hesitate to say that if mechanics took the course that 

 many farmers do, they would starve to death in less than five 

 years, luiless a remarkably favorable conjunction of circum- 

 stances protected them from the consequences of their indiscre- 

 tion. "When a mechanic enters upon a certain kind of business 

 he knows just how much he makes, how much a day — if he 

 works by the day — or how much a year, and he can and must 

 regulate his expenses accordingly ; thus, if prudent • and judi- 

 cious, he goes on making a little, at all events, and if he lives 

 within his means, a great deal. Thus, at the end of five 

 years, after much self-denial, he will be likely to find himself . 

 doing well. But if, after he has begun a particular kind of 

 work, he becomes convinced that it is unprofitable, he leaves it 

 at once with a trifling loss. Now how many farmers can be 

 found who keep a strict account with any crop or any field, or 



