Xl Preface. 
¥ 
the greatest improvements in husbandry, have 
been either suggested, or made, by those who were 
not professional farmers. If pecuniary assistance 
should be required out of the public funds, it 
should be afforded. 4 cent expended, with pro- 
priety, to aid and reward genius and industry, in 
pursuing agricultural experiments and researches, 
will add an eagle to the public stock. This is 
applying nourishment to the root of the public 
prosperity. 
Were it without example, it would be surpri- 
sing that legislatures, consisting for the most part 
of farmers, have done so little for the encourage- 
ment of a profession, which is calculated, above 
all others, to produce additions to the common 
mass of property, by creating countless supplies, 
drawn from the earth. 3 
In England, the establishment of a Board of 
Agriculture, under the patronage and pecuniary 
encouragement of the legislature, is recent, but 
its advantages are incalculable. 
In France, agriculture is accounted, as it really 
is in all countries, the basis of public and private 
wealth and prosperity. Its patronage and encou- 
ragement are placed among the first objects of 
public attention; and radically interwoven with 
the principles and system of their national policy 
and government. Perhaps the period is not distant 
