198 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. ' 



All the books in the world never of themselves 

 made one good farmer ; but, on the other hand, no 

 man in this age can be a thoroughly good farmer 

 without the knowledge which is more easily and 

 rapidly acquired from books than otherwise. Books 

 are no substitute for open-eyed observation and prac- 

 tical experience ; but they enable one familiar with 

 their contents to observe with an accuracy, and ex- 

 periment with an intelligence, that are unattainable 

 without them. The very farmer who tells you that 

 he never opened a book which treats of Agriculture, 

 and never wants to see one, will ask his neighbor 

 how to grow or cure tobacco, or hops, or sorgho, or 

 any crop with which he is yet unacquainted, when 

 the chances are a hundred to one that this particular 

 neighbor cannot advise him so well as the volume 

 which embodies the experience of a thousand culti- 

 vators of this very plant instead of barely one. A 

 good book treating practically of Agriculture, or of 

 some department therein, is simply a compendium 

 of the experience of past ages combined with such 

 knowledge as the present generation have been en- 

 abled to add thereto. It may be faulty or defective 

 on some points ; it is not to be blindly confided in, 

 nor slavishly followed it is to be mastered, discussed, 

 criticised, and followed so far as its teachings coincide 

 with the dictates of science, experience, and common 

 sense. Its true office is suggestion ; the good farmer 

 will lean upon and trust it as an oracle only where 

 his own proper knowledge proves entirely deficient. 



