78 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



harvested, and the actual cost and real profit of every crop, 

 animal or product they have raised, and would go a long way 

 toward relieving a very material hindrance to successful 

 farming. In these days of progress and rapid inter-com- 

 munication, no farmer can be really successful who does not 

 improve his mind, sharpen his intelligence, and keep himself 

 abreast of the times by reading one or more of the excel- 

 lently managed agricultural papers ; in any one of which, 

 though they may differ, " as one star differs from another in 

 glory," he can alwaj^s find, with the full reports of markets 

 and crops, some useful suggestions in the various essays, let- 

 ters from other farmers, and perhaps editorials. 



What Hamlet says of the players may not unaptly be said 

 of the papers of the day : ' ' They are the abstract and brief 

 chronicles of the times. After your death you were better 

 have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live." 

 The farmer who entirely neglects these sources of instruc- 

 tion, and those other springs of agricultural education, our 

 valuable State and society reports, to say nothing of the 

 various books on different farm topics, never knows the 

 condition of the market, the crop or stock reports, the names 

 nor uses of the most improved implements and machines, 

 the character and qualities of animals, trees or seeds, and the 

 advanced experiments and tests of all these things by other 

 farmers and the experiment stations, and who keeps him- 

 self ignorant of the principles of agricultural chemistry, noAV 

 deemed so essential to the intelligent management of a farm, 

 has upon his neck a heavy yoke of hindrance to successful 

 farming. 



Debt. — Doubtless, one of the most oppressive and dis- 

 couraging elements covered by the title of this paper is debt. 

 I mean specially the debt contracted in the purchase or the 

 taking of the farm. Many a young man, who has by diligence 

 and prudence accumulated, as a farm laborer or otherwise, a 

 few hundred dollars, fond of the occupation of farming, 

 regarding it as a most honorable and independent way of 

 obtaining a home and an honest living, and perhaps stimu- 

 lated by the example of other prosperous farmers, unknow- 

 ing the circumstances of their beginnings or their means, 

 buys a farm at a cost much exceeding his cash resources, and 



