GENERAL REMARKS AND DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 387 



sity of circumstances which different cases present. Most men 

 have their peculiar methods of accomplishing an object, which 

 are in truth the best for them, because the most natural ; they 

 would be hampered and embarrassed by other modes, less familiar, 

 which might be prescribed. Unless, therefore, there is some 

 striking originality, or some obvious and peculiar convenience, in 

 the method suggested, it is only necessary to say in general what 

 is to be done, and leave it to every man s own ingenuity to find 

 out the best method of effecting it. 



My principal object is to point out, in European agriculture, 

 such circumstances of difference between it and our own as 

 may serve for the improvement of the agriculture of the United 

 States, and to give such an account of the modes of manage 

 ment which prevail abroad, and which have been sanctioned by 

 long practice and experience, as may facilitate their adoption, as 

 far as the circumstances existing among us would render their 

 adoption eligible. Every country, differing from other countries 

 in its climate and temperature, in its soil, in its facility for pro 

 curing manures, in the character and supply of its labor, in its 

 commercial and political relations, must be expected to have an 

 agriculture in some respects peculiar to itself; and the practices 

 of another country can only be partially adapted to its own. At 

 the same time, the general principles of agricultural practice are 

 every where the same ; and these, with the various modifications, 

 which they may be expected to assume under different degrees 

 of civilization, or different degrees of improvement in science and 

 the arts, and their general and special application, cannot be too 

 fully discussed and illustrated. We may learn much from others, 

 who do things which we are never called to do ; who cultivate 

 crops which we never cultivate, and never can cultivate ; and we 

 may learn much from persons who do the same things which we 

 do, but in a different way from ourselves who cultivate the same 

 crops, but by their own peculiar methods. We may learn much 

 from those who cultivate better, and from those who do not culti 

 vate so well as ourselves. There is little hope in any thing, so 

 far as any great improvement is concerned, for the man who im 

 plicitly follows any guide whatever. He must exercise his own 

 reason, experience, observation, and judgment, in the application 

 of rules which may be laid down for his direction. 



The celebrated Bakewell, whose name occupies a distinguished 



