PRACTICAL HINTS ON FARMING. 35 



attention in onr public schools to such primary education as 

 shall tit our boys to enter and graduate there ; and while on 

 this subject, permit me to recommend the perusal by every 

 farmer of the able and interestiug reports of Mr. Flint, the 

 Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. These 

 reports are collated, with singular judgment and wise discrim- 

 ination, from various practical and professional sources, and 

 embody a perfect repertory of agricultural information, the 

 result, in many cases, of direct experiment in soils. 



The wonderful proficiency of the Greek mathematicians over 

 modern professors has been accounted for by the fact that the 

 Greek masters instructed their pupils by rule and compass, 

 and demonstrated their problems on real magnitudes which 

 they could feel and see, while problems of our modern 

 teachers are less obvious to the scholar, because solved by 

 algebraical process onlv. 



The importance of agricultural training will be seen at 

 once by comparing the disparity of our productions with 

 those of France or England. France, with but one-fifteenth 

 of our territory, and not as large as three of our medium. 

 States, produces fifty per cent, more wheat than we do on our 

 fresh and fertile lands, and after subsisting a population not 

 much less than our own, exports from the product of its soil 

 double the quantity we do ; and the English farmer manages, 

 by superior productive economy, to extract profitable returns 

 from lauds burdened with an amount of annual rental and taxes 

 which equal the value of the same acreage here in fee simple. 



Much of our unproductive farming arises, I think, from a 

 lack of capital. Too large a portion of the farmer's means 

 is in the land. If a manufacturer should have three mills, 

 with working capital only sufficient for one, it would be but 

 a question of time when his embarrassments would ruin him. 

 In England, where taxes and the rent of land compel the 

 most rigid economy as well as the utmost sldll and industry 

 to make it pay, the farmer must have a sum of ready money 

 quite equal to the cost of the same number of acres here 

 with which to stock, fertilize and cultivate it. I am confident 

 that if many of our farmers would dispose of half their 

 acreage to procure ready money to cultivate the other half 

 to the full extent of its productive power, availing themselves 



