INTRODUCTION. 19 



improvement. If every man who wins Ms livelihood 

 from the soil, would appropriate the experience of his 

 fellow-cultivators by connecting himself at once with 

 a farmers' club, and subscribing promptly to an agri- 

 cultural journal, causing it to be taken and read in 

 his family, the effect on the soil and crops of the en- 

 suing season would be marvellous and magical all 

 over the country. 



The valuable facts and experiments, and the va- 

 riety of information which abound in these journals, 

 produce their legitimate results, in improving, ele- 

 vating, and enriching the farmer, with just as much 

 certainty as does the manure applied to his crops, or 

 the tillage bestowed on the soil. The conductors and 

 writers of this branch of the press devote themselves 

 with untiring industry to collect and disseminate the 

 opinions and experience of our wisest practical men, 

 and the scientific principles laid down by the highest 

 authorities. 



It is not easy to determine how many of these jour- 

 nals are at present taken and read throughout the 

 country, but it seems probable that the number of sub- 

 scribers, putting all the journals together, would not 

 much exceed one-third of a million, which is less than 

 one man in ten of the agricultural proprietors, and 

 scarcely one in forty of the farming population. It 

 must be admitted that this ratio of readers to the 

 whole number of cultivators is discreditably low. In 

 an agricultural community numbering four million 

 families, there ought to be, at the least calculation, 

 one million subscribers to this class of periodicals ; nor 



