PREFACE. IX 



their oxen in a silver yoke with gold bows. I have aimed to 

 commend mainly, if not uniformly, such improvements only 

 on our grandfathers' husbandry as a fanner worth $1,000, or 

 over, may adopt not all at once, but gradually, and from 

 year to year. I hope I shall thus convince some farmers 

 that draining, irrigation, deep plowing, heavy fertilizing, 

 &c., are not beyond their power, as so many have too 

 readily presumed and pronounced them. 



That I should say very little, and that little vaguely, of 

 the breeding and raising of animals, the proper time to sow 

 or plant, &c., &c., can need no explanation. By far the 

 larger number of those whose days have mainly been given 

 to farming, know more than I do of these details, and are 

 better authority than I am with regard to them. On the 

 other hand, I have traveled extensively, and not heedlessly, 

 and have seen and pondered certain broader features of the 

 earth's improvement and tillage which many stay-at-home 

 cultivators have had little or no opportunity to study or 

 even observe. By restricting the topics with which I deal, 

 the probability of treating some of them to the average 

 farmer's profit is increased. 



And, whatever may be his judgment on this slight work, 

 I know that, if I could have perused one of like tenor half a 

 century ago, when I was a patient worker and an eager reader 

 in my father's humble home, my subsequent career would 

 have been less anxious and my labors less exhausting than 



