EXPERIENCE A THOROUGH TEACHER. 507 



details of agriculture, by reading and experiment, has 

 shown me that the farmer never ceases to learn while life 

 lasts. The trouble is that many do not begin to educate 

 themselves until many important years of their working life 

 are past. 



Experience, that thorough but costly teacher, eventually 

 shows them how little they really know, and how much they 

 have yet to learn. The theorizing of gentlemen ruralists 

 and mere scholars has disgusted them with book-farm 

 ing. 



Availing themselves at length of such works as they can 

 find, containing the practical labors of adepts in the art, 

 they discover most important unexplored fields before them, 

 almost appalling in their extent, except to the mind trained 

 to study. Carefully considering the details of the art, they 

 finally decide upon the specialty which they will follow, 

 and thenceforward they devote themselves chiefly to stock- 

 breeding or stock-feeding; the cultivation of the cereals, 

 or of hay; orcharding; the raising of vegetables or of seeds; 

 floriculture, or the like, according as their position and loca 

 tion will warrant, and their previous education will allow. 

 It takes years and successive and grave mistakes before the 

 knowledge is gained which will enable them economically to 

 blend these specialtes with the succession and relation of 

 crops necessary to keep up the fertility of their farms. A 

 few are successful, and leave their farms better than they 

 found them, but vastly more exhaust their soil and their 

 energies in a perpetual struggle for the necessities of life. 



To obviate this difficulty, and lead the coming generation 

 to a proper education of their faculties, education to the 

 industries was proposed and agitated, upon the basis of en 

 dowment, by national aid, of industrial schools for the better 

 training of yonth to these pursuits. 



