14 INTRODUCTION. 



have manfully broken off this tyrannical yoke of "old fogy" con 

 ventionalism, and teach our sons that we need the most active, 

 promising, intelligent, and skillful men and boys, for farmers ; and 

 if a boy happens to be deficient in the attic story, he must learn 

 a trade, and be a mechanic. Our forefathers brought up their 

 sons to feel that farmers belonged to an inferior caste ; and many 

 of our fathers and fastidious mothers taught their children, that 

 manual labor was dishonorable and degrading, and that, in order 

 to be respected in the world, they must have a situation behind 

 the merchant's counter, or study theology, or jurisprudence. But 

 we, at the present day, teach those under our care, that there is 

 a no more honorable, nor respectable, nor honest livelihood, than 

 that of cultivating the soil, and its kindred arts and sciences. 

 And we teach them also, that, in order to be a thorough-going, 

 energetic, and successful farmer, a man must be educated ; that he 

 must have a good smattering of agricultural chemistry, natural 

 philosophy, geology, mineralogy, botany, and a good peep into 

 vegetable physiology, and arithmetic and geometry, &c. ; and 

 must have a good understanding, also, of the manufacture of 

 agricultural implements, according to the most convenient and 

 approved form and weight ; and must know how to handle them 

 with skill and dexterity. Therefore, 



A FARMER MUST BE A MAN OF THOUGHT AND INVESTIGATION. 



No man can reasonably expect to succeed in the thorough 

 cultivation of the soil, and raise good crops on his farm from year 

 to year, as long as he lives, and not : mpoverish it, but leave it in 

 as good, or even a better state of fertility at the end of his days, 

 unless he is a man of thought, accustomed to devise the best and 

 most practicable arrangements and systems of management, not 

 only for producing, but for consuming the productions of the farm. 

 (See How TO MAKE A GOOD FARM BETTER, in next vol.) He 

 must not always be " whistling along for want of thought," but 

 he must think beforehand not a year afterwards what he can 

 do practically to bring all his practices and farming operations to 

 a greater degree of perfection for the year to come, than they were 



