464 Scientific Agriculture. T^ctober, 



Itijutifit Slgrirnltnrr, 



Time was when the knight of the three Rs, "Reading, 'Riting and 

 'Rithmetic," was the literal hero of the farmer's home. The yeomen 

 of the country were popularly excluded from the more intricate walks 

 of letters and science. Their avocation demanded no literary grati- 

 fication beyond the every day business of piling log-heaps, pacing 

 off the corn ground, measuring the peas, or counting up how much 

 must be taken out for the new plow, mother's dress, and Susan's 

 bonnet. The effect has been to degrade the business of Agriculture 

 even in the eyes of those engaged in its toils. The warm blood of 

 youth has often been chilled by the reflection that his calling was 

 menial, that his soul was fettered in its aspirations by the clay of his 

 father's farm. Taught to look to the professional man as his supe- 

 rior in learning and ability, and to the tradesman as a too successful 

 rival in money making, he falls into the error of incorrigible discon- 

 tentment. 



How often, in moon-stuck reveries, has the plow-boy, whistling to 

 the tune of Vacuity^ dreamed of the glistening gold of the counting- 

 room — of the polished boots and pearly linen of the taper fingered 

 clerk. Or, with a ''big idea in his head," has he, in imagination, 

 roused the sleeping energies of the moral world, or suspended the 

 interests of the nation on the next ominous sentence from his lips. 

 And just then, "the Hon. Judge Smith, from town," drives along, 

 his daughter at his side, smiling to see that awkward fellow plodding 

 in the mud. Walking, shame faced from his day-dreams, he secretly 

 resolves upon some nobler calling. And why? Because the popu- 

 larly learned^ and otherwise favored have looked upon the plow-boy's 

 furrow as the path of the ignorant; no glowing embers from the 

 workshops of science to light that path, nor expand the struggling 

 genius. Little has that son of Cincinnatus dreamed that in every 

 clod turned by the plow, in every stone removed to the wall, and in 

 every esculent or blade rooting in the soil, there may be matter for 

 more ennobling study than may be culled from the whole list of 

 counting-room technicalities, of court pleas, or ^sculapian arts, and 

 not in the least uncongenial with the highest achievements of 

 oratory. 



