524 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



of the priuciplos and practice of farming engage the attention of the most 

 advanced mind?, and the educated gentry enter with zeal into agricultural 

 pursuits. No problems which task the powers of the mathematician, no points 

 of law which plague the lawyer, no questions of medicine which bother the 

 doctor, are half as difficult, half as instructive, or half as important, as are the 

 problems of agriculture. Instead of regarding it as a drudgery and unworthy 

 the attention of the clever sons of farmers, if they could view it aright, they 

 would see in their profession a wide and promising field for scientific research, 

 an eleviited arena in whicli to exercise and task their mental powers, and one 

 in which distinction may be attained, and that more worthily than through the 

 real drudgery of professions of very questionable utility. 



If to the eye of taste a waste uncultivated field is repulsive, what to the eye 

 of educated judgments is a waste neglected mind? What opportunities for 

 benefiting the })ossessoi', his neighbors, his countiy and his age, lie fallow and 

 unimproved. Here are energies but stimulating the growth of noisome weeds; 

 there, the barrenness of death. Such do we daily see around us among the 

 young men — the young farmers of our land. They know not or heed not the 

 opportunities for improvement that surround them, that press upon them, nay, 

 that solicit their acceptance of the boon of culture. Alas, how many of them 

 have yet to learn that " an enlightened people understand that in our age 

 culture is the only true distinction among nations," and equally among in- 

 dividuals which compose the nation. 



*' Why should agricultural wisdom continue to be a groping backward and 

 downward instead of forward and upward ; a digging among old fossils, rather 

 than penetrating originalities 1" Why should not farmers become intellectual 

 and progressive ? Does not superior intelligence in farming as in every other 

 calling make the better workman 1 Does not the well being and progress of 

 the country depend upon the farmers, and their wise application of the teach- 

 mgs of advancing science 1 "A man may be a farmer, no doubt, in most un- 

 blessed ignorance of the physical phenomena occurring around him, but ignorant 

 he cannot be without experiencing the baleful effects of ignorance. And seeing 

 that all terrestrial arrangements, however apparently unconnected, do eventually 

 mingle and combine in the production of the results ordained by the intelligence 

 of the Supremely Wise, we believe it most injurious to the interests of agricul- 

 ture that farmers should have but a limited acquaintance with those complex 

 agencies which must be in harmonious co-operation before even a blade of grass 

 can spring from the soil." 



No art or calling requires for its full comprehension and perfect practice tlie 

 aid of as many branches of systematized knowledge as does that of the farmer. 

 No profession claims a wider range of wants or calls more largely on the man 

 of science, or sooner exhausts his attainments. Witness already the applica- 

 tions of chemistry which have caused a growth beyond its ability to supply 

 adequate information in explanation of new ditficulties which the acute practical 

 mind is daily meeting with. It ought not to be expected of science that it 

 should explain every difficulty as it arises, or make plain every anomaly in cul- 

 tivation, or render the art of farming as certain and as easily understood and 

 practiced as the manufacture of cloth or iron. The perfect practice of agricul- 

 ture is a subject infinitely more difficult and profound than any other art, me- 

 chanical or manufacturing. " Agriculture, in its true sense, is an encyclopedia 

 in itself — requiring great knowledge, fine powers of observation, high mental 

 cultivation, assiduous thought and study," The intelligent and educated young 

 farmer, who enters upon the business imbued with the right spirit, will find that 

 when the torch of science shall have illumined the field of his labors, he will 

 discover attractions in the many operations of the farm to which he is now a 

 stranger. The dew, the rain, the sun, the winds, the clouds, the clear sky, the 

 fluods and the droughts, the rocks, the soils, the native plants and the introduced 



