4: DEDICATION. 



It is not the mere language of compliment, Gentlemen, to say that, 

 while you have been steadily, and patiently, and zealously engaged from 

 month to month, and from year to year, in writing up our farmers to a 

 higher level of intelligence and success, you have at the same time, and 

 in the same measure, been writing up to a higher level the prosperity 

 and affluence of our common country. 



The clever author of " Ten Acres Enough," in accounting for the 

 success of his farming enterprise, remarked, with pardonable compla- 

 cency, that he had manured his soil with brains. The metaphor will 

 bear a wider application. It may be said with equal propriety that our 

 agricultural writers have been for a series of years manuring a continent 

 with the same remarkable fertilizer. 



It is one of the most auspicious signs of the times, that the general 

 public are beginning to take a much livelier interest than ever before in 

 all that relates to the cultivation of the soil. Horticultural magazines 

 and farming journals are finding their way into hundreds of families 

 who, having no ground to cultivate, are yet waking up to a general 

 interest in the subject. Quotations from the agricultural press are now 

 frequently and almost constantly seen in the general newspaper ; and 

 people are beginning to discover that husbandry, in one form or another, 

 is related to every condition of life, and that the welfare of the whole 

 community is bound up in the success and prosperity of the farmer. 



To you, Gentlemen, we are largely indebted for this improved and 

 encouraging condition of the public mind. And though your services 

 in this great cause have never yet been adequately appreciated, the day 

 is undoubtedly near when a more generous recognition will be accorded 

 to the influence and usefulness of your labors. One thing, at least, is 

 certain. If contemporary justice is not rendered to the leaders and 

 guides and expounders of American agriculture, another generation will 

 gratefully record their names among the benefactors of our country. 



I am, Gentlemen, respectfully and gratefully yours, 



THE AUTHOR. 



