ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 47 



What is there in agriculture that requires a man to be 

 ignorant if he will be skillful ? Or why may every other 

 class of men learn by reading except the farmer ? Mecha 

 nics have their journals ; commercial men have their 

 papers ; religious men, theirs ; politicians, theirs ; there are 

 magazines and journals for the arts, for science, for educa 

 tion, and why not for that grand pursuit on which all these 

 stand? We really could never understand why farmers 

 should not wish to have their vocation on a level with 

 others ; why they should feel proud to have no paper, while 

 every other pursuit is fond of having one. 



Those who are prejudiced against book-farming are 

 either good farmers, misinformed of the design of agricul 

 tural papers, or poor farmers who only treat this subject as 

 they do all others, with blundering ignorance. First, the 

 good farmers ; there are in every county many industrious, 

 hard-working men, who know that they cannot afford to 

 risk anything upon wild experiments. They have a growing 

 family to support, taxes to pay, lands perhaps on which 

 purchase money is due, or they are straining every nerve to 

 make their crops build a barn, that the barn may hold their 

 crops. They suppose an agricultural paper to be stuffed 

 full of wild fancies, expensive experiments, big stories made 

 up by men who know of no farming except parlor-farming. 

 They would, doubtless, be surprised to learn that ninety- 

 nine parts in a hundred of the contents of agricultural 

 papers are written by hard-working practical farmers! 

 that the editor s business is not to foist absurd stories upon 

 credulous readers, but to sift stories, to scrutinize accounts, 

 to obtain whatever has been abundantly proved to be fact, 

 and to reject all that is suspected to be mere fanciful theory. 

 Such papers are designed to prevent imposition ; to kill off 

 pretenders by exposing them ; to search out from practical 

 men whatever they have found out, and to publish it for the 

 benefit of their brethren all over the Union; to spread 

 before the laboring classes such sound, well-approved scien- 



