AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE. 



By H. W. CAMPBELL. 



There are many people today who have heard the simple idea of 

 scientific agriculture ridiculed. In years gone by it was more com- 

 monly called book farming. The writer well remembers fully thirty 

 years ago a middle aged man who had a farm and other property left 

 to him by a relative. He started out to show people in that neighbor- 

 hood how to farm. He first secured a large number of books on gen- 

 eral farm topics, both American and foreign, as well as ancient pro- 

 ductions, and of course he did as his neighbors predicted, made a total 

 failure of everything. But did he go at it scientifically? No, sir. 

 He went at it entirely devoid of understanding. He would not listen 

 to suggestions by his neighbors. He was going to introduce something 

 wonderful into that neighborhood, and that something he knew abso- 

 lutely nothing about. 



A very similar incident was related to us while recently visiting 

 the various irrigating districts in Colorado. One of those commonly 

 called "smart Alecks," with some money, bought a farm with a water 

 right, and was ''just going to show those Colorado people how to irri- 

 gate and grow big crops. " When he began work he was kindly told 

 that he would make a failure, but he replied that his money bought 

 the farm, and with a sarcastic wink said, "he would show them a thing 

 or two." But the poor, conceited fellow vanished financially and bodily 

 in a few months. These are certainly extremes for illustrations, but 

 there are far too many of the same character, and they recal to mind 

 a word of warning from the good old Book, Prov. xiii:18: "Poverty 

 and shame be to him that refuseth instruction, but he that regardeth 

 reproof shall be honored." In all our wide and varied experience we 

 cannot recall an instance where this passage has not proved true. 

 The point we wish to make from the above is that conceited agri- 

 cultral theory when carried into practice has almost invariably proved 

 to be a pauperizing delusion, while science, as given by Webster, 

 embraces those branches of knowledge which give a positive state- 

 ment of truth as founded in the nature of things, or established by 

 observation and experience, and it is this kind of scientific agricultura 

 information that the average western farmer not only needs but must 

 have. Now hold on, kind reader; don't think for a moment that we 

 look upon the average farmer as an ignoramus. No, sir. We have 

 met too many of the western farmers in our extended travels to 



