1884.] VARIOUS VIEWS OF FARMING. 217 



cause for the too general antipathy against book-learning. By 

 not a small class in those severely Puritanic days, all learning was 

 held to be unfavorable to personal piety. Persons are now living 

 whose parents argued against bringing books into the house be- 

 cause as they said they had observed that much reading had a 

 tendency to prevent young persons from "experiencing religion," 

 something in their minds far more to be deplored than the pro- 

 foundest ignorance. The book-farmer has been succeeded by the 



FANCY FARMER, 



usually a man who has acquired a competence in trade or manufac- 

 tures, but retaining a degree of love for the art that feeds all, either 

 retires from business or settles down on a farm for the amusement 

 he may be able to get out of it, or else he divides his time between 

 business and farming, making the latter a study from a business 

 man's stand-point. With plenty of money to invest he aims to 

 jump at one bound from the low level of the ordinary farmer to that 

 of the model farmer. He purchases the best stock from foreign 

 lands, and experiments with the most approved implements; he 

 introduces new varieties of grains, vegetables, fruits, and even 

 flowers; his business calling him abroad he studies the improved 

 methods of other nations, and takes note of the weak points in our 

 domestic systems, and, possessing true patriotism as well as business 

 abihty, he naturally strives to inculcate his new ideas into the minds 

 of friends and associates. 



To the so-called, fancy farmer, we are indebted in large degree 

 for the farmers' club, the agricultural society and the cattle show, 

 the agricultural college, the experiment station, and, indirectly, for 

 the dissemination of all our new breeds of domestic animals, and 

 the endless variety of valuable labor saving implements of tillage 

 now deemed so indispensable in all the more advanced systems of 

 modern agriculture. 



The fancy farmer has made many mistakes but they have been 

 made chiefly at his own expense. Those who claim to be practical 

 farmers have much to thank the fancy farmer for and very little 

 to charge against him. 



SCIENTIFIC FARMING 



is comparatively a modern term variously applied by different per- 

 sons to styles of farming supposed to be a little better than their 



