STUDY OF AGRICULTURE AS A SCIENCE. 23 



precepts and discoveries which relate to it, is not a new one. 

 Three thousand years ago, the Greeks, whose wisdom and 

 whose science gave to the nature of man a new and distin- 

 guished lustre, coiisidered that the business of agriculture 

 could not well succeed and progress towards perfection, with- 

 out a knowledge of those precepts which had resulted from a 

 long series of observations and experiments, which should em- 

 brace the piiiiosophy and the practical discoveries of the whole 

 age in which they lived. Several writers among that illustri- 

 ous people, employed themselves in collecting such precepts, 

 and recording them for their own improvement, and the benefit 

 of their posterity. Several of their celebrated philosophers, 

 as Demacritus, Archylas, and Epicharmas, left useful instruc- 

 tions on the subject of agriculture ; and many ages before 

 them, they had been sung by Hesicod, in one of his poems. 

 And many of those precepts were transmitted through suc- 

 cessive generations to our ancestors. Whatever knov/ledge 

 of those precepts is possessed by their descendants, the farm- 

 ers in the United States, has generally been acquired by 

 either tradition or observation. Traditions, it will be acknov/i- 

 edged, are often founded in error, and the evils resulting from 

 them descend from generation to generation. The observa- 

 tions and successful experiments of intelligent farmers, it is 

 evident, cannot be extensively communicated to others, but 

 through the medium of the press. Such is the condition of 

 many young gentlemen, when they commence the business of 

 agriculture, that they have to depend for their knowledge on 

 their own practical experiments : to acquire this so as to ren- 

 der their labors most efficacious, may, and often does, require 

 the greatest and best part of their lives ; when by a very little 

 expense of time and money, they may learn from books what 

 have been the results of the most important experiments in the 

 history of agricultural science. It is very obvious, then, that 

 the maxims and principles which relate to it, should be correct- 

 ly recorded and studied, as other sciences. The innumerable 

 volumes that have been written upon this subject, among the 

 wisest and most learned nations, may convince us that it has 

 been so considered by them, and not regarded as a matter very 

 easily understood. But the great mass of our common farmers, 

 whose minds are not much enlightened by general scicnce| 

 cannot expect their occupation will ever be elevated in public 

 opinion, to that dignity among the employments of men, which 

 it ought to sustain, so long as they are disposed to treat it as a 

 mere menial exercise, and unworthy the efforts of intellectual 

 capacity. The knowledge which gives man hi^ supremacy 



