VI PREFACE. 



The State Board of Agriculture, strongly impressed with the 

 importance of these views, has caused this volume to be prepared 

 as a text-book for schools, with the hope that it may do some 

 thing to lay the foundation of a complete agricultural education, 

 where it may most effectually be done, in the district school. 



In the execution of the work, Mr. Emerson has prepared the 

 first thirteen chapters and the twenty-first chapter, upon the 

 Rotation of Crops, and Mr. Flint the remainder, commencing 

 with the fourteenth chapter. Many of the more important 

 principles embraced in the topics discussed, have been repeated 

 in various forms and in different connections, for the purpose 

 of impressing them more strongly upon the mind, but it is 

 confidently hoped that this fact will not make the volume 

 unattractive to the general reader. 



The authors do not lay any claim to originality. They have 

 availed themselves of the information of scientific and practical 

 men, and have tried to state it in a concise and attractive form, so 

 far as the subjects treated of seemed to make it practicable to 

 do so. 



BOSTON, November, 1861. 



