THE FARMER 179 



beneficial to Farmers, and incapable of diversion from 

 the right course. Prizes for the best colts or hunters 

 bred in the limits of the hunt, prizes for the best 

 sheep, or indeed for anything exclusively in the 

 province of Farmers, might, we think, be advan- 

 tageously substituted, especially now, when every 

 district has its agricultural association or Farmer's 

 club. 



We like to see a good lot of Farmers in the hunting 

 field. People may talk of the Excise and the Stamp 

 Offices, indicating the prosperity of the country, but 

 to our minds, there is nothing so convincing as seeing 

 plenty of Farmers out hunting. Farmers are not 

 improvident people ; they live too retired to be im- 

 provident, and it may be laid down as a general rule, 

 that no man who communes much with himself will 

 ever be so. Extravagance and improvidence are 

 engendered by contact and crowds ; one man leads 

 another astray, and having embarked in a thing few 

 men like to back out. But Farmers are not gregarious 

 beings. Society with them is the exception, and not 

 the general rule. The family circle supplies their 

 wants in that way, and a domestic man will rarely be 

 found doing an act prejudicial to his family. When 

 times are adverse, then Farmers do not hunt, and 

 therefore we hold that a good show of them is the 

 most satisfactory evidence of general national pros- 

 perity. 



We hope to live to see farming occupying a higher 

 position in the enterprise of our country than it at 

 present holds. Not but there are many bright 

 ornaments among its peaceful followers already, but 

 we hope to see farming taken up more as the occupa- 

 tion of gentlemen, who will adopt its fine, healthy, 

 interesting pursuits, instead of some of the genteel 

 starvations called "professions," that many waste the 

 best of their lives in following, to quit in disgust at the 

 time they ought to be making money. Farming is 



