164 Scientific Agriculture — Its Difficulties. [April, 



over again, on a large scale, the same improvident round of tillage. 

 If any more potent motive were sought, or urgent necessity pleaded, 

 for immediate action, than the one furnished in the startling fact, that 

 we are worse than wasting the capabilities of the soil now under culti- 

 vation, to an extent not less than three hundred millions of dollars 

 ($300,000,000), annually, (so say our patent office reports), I know not 

 where it can be found. And were it possible to find such motive, it 

 would be alike inoperative as long as a bare subsistence could be 

 obtained ; and if the call for an adequate remedy were made when star- 

 vation was upon us, it would be as useless as it would be impracticable. 

 To fold our hands, then, in inactivity, under the plea that we have 

 millions of acres of unoccupied and unwasted domain, and want is yet in 

 the distance, in reserve for generations yet to come, is as unwise as it is 

 improvident and wicked. 



But our objector still urges the plea, that the public mind must be 

 better prepared before we enter upon this work. To show how slow 

 our progress has been amid- the multiplied facilities so often appealed to 

 for efiecting the proper preparation, we will delay a moment to notice a 

 few of the ideas and sentiments in this particular, expressed by some of 

 our leading statesmen, from the origin of our republic to the present. 



And first we find, that Washington, himself, recommended that a 

 national institute be established, on which subject he used this language : 

 '* Your young military men, who thirst to reap a harvest of honors, 

 don't care how many seeds of war are sown ; but for the sake of humanity 

 it is devoutly to be wished that the manhj and dignijicd employment 

 of agriculture, and the humanizing benefits of commerce, should super- 

 sede the waste of war, and the rage for conquest." And Judge Peters 

 informs us that it was in contemplation, and that his object was well 

 nigh carried into efiect in the year 1796, to bring before Congress a 

 grand plan of engrafting the subject of agriculture into a national sys- 

 tem of education, and of. placing the cultivators of the soil, and their 

 instruction, under national patronage. Had this been done, what 

 advances would have been made in the sciences of chemistry, botany, and 

 geology, in their agricultural and horticultural relations ! What dignity 

 and position would the farmers of this broad land now have rightfully 

 secured to them. 



James Madison adds his testimony as follows : — " To the due success 

 of agriculture, both theory and practice are requisite ; they reflect light 

 on each other. The former, without the tests of the latter, is a vain 

 science ; the latter without the precepts of the former, is generally 

 enslaved to ancient modes, however erroneous. In no instance is habit 



