364 Farmers^ give us your Experience. August 



FARMERS, GIVE US YOUR EXPERIENCE. 



There is a vast fund of useful, practical information on all the vari- 

 ous subjects pertinent to agriculture and horticulture all around us; 

 and in possession too of those who are intelligent and well able to 

 impart their knowledge. Many of these persons in conversation or 

 by letter to a friend communicate freely, but they will not for the 

 press. Why so ? It is not expected by farmers that farmers will 

 or can write in a fine, poetical style; nor is it expected to be at all 

 necessary. Their subjects are every-day ones, and all we ask is for 

 them to give views on experience in every-day language. 



As a farmer we have written, not with a view of seeing our name 

 in print, or from vanity, but that the experience and deductions 

 therefrom, or from reading, might aid some one. Let the practice 

 and knowledge of farmers be once common property, where will our 

 improvement cease ? Let every one try to do something and will 

 not our standing be elevated? One farmer believes he can and does 

 manage his corn crop better than his neighbors ; another knows he 

 cultivates his wheat, cotton or tobacco on a better plan, and so on 

 through the whole catalogue of our products ; yet these very indi- 

 viduals are either so indifferent to the improvement of the country, 

 or so fearful that they will not be considered bright, that they hold 

 their knowledge as they would dollars. This, farmers, is wrong. 

 Write out your experience in your own plain way, so you will clearly 

 understand yourself, andyou will be better satisfied with yourselves 

 and others. Knowledge should be public property, and especially 

 the kind of knowledge all farmers need. We can not in a long 

 series of years arrive at just and proper conclusions by ourselves, but 

 if united it would be electrical. While one is devoting himself to any 

 particular vegetable product, or breed of animals, another is at some- 

 thing else ; and by exchanging knowledge, as it may be exchanged 

 rapidly in these days, every one becomes speedily the possessor of all 

 the required information. Should any one by a series of experi- 

 ments, or from reasoning, have gotten into an error he will thus be 

 corrected, and should he be right his assurance is made doubly sure, 

 and a certain benefit is the result. Now, one chief design of our 

 farm department is to experiment on various crops, fruits, etc.; and 



