292 On Agricultural Tours, &c. 
on the spot, without trusting to subsequent recollection, 
what was worthy of public communication, would. con- 
fer (not an incalculable) but a calculable benefit on the 
public. One section of the country would then learn 
the actual profit or loss of modes of husbandry pursued 
in another; perhaps possessing the same soil and cli- 
mate, but deriving a greater or less advantage from 
them, in consequence of variations in their modes of 
husbandry. It would discover its own errors, or in- 
crease its own improyements, as the case might be, by 
comparison with others.—The publications of such 
tours, particularly under the sanction of a respectable 
society, would widely and promptly disseminate this 
useful knowledge. Is it not surprising, that with the 
example so long before us, of a nation whose language 
we use almost exclusively, and whose literature is the 
chief reliance of our booksellers and printers, and from 
whom we import so regularly every publication that 
appears, and, among others, the various tours, not only 
through Great Britam and Ireland, but parts of the 
continent, that we should not in a single instance, that 
I know of, have had a similar exertion made? I ex- 
cept indeed some of those “‘ notices”? of our agriculture, 
which a few hasty and prejudiced foreign travellers 
have inserted in their works. Men who have allowed 
too short a space of time, even for the secondary im- 
portance, in which this subject presented itself to them. 
Men, who have formed their theories before they be- 
gan their travels ; and, inclined beforehand to depreci- 
ate the progress of art in these new countries, are too 
blind to perceive, or too uncandid to confess, that art 
has already made a considerable progress among us; 
