j v PREFACE. 



inquiry at the festive table and the social circle of the farmer, to know 

 whence came our tea and our coffee, our sugar and our spices, and indeed 

 the hundred other articles, foreign as well as domestic, that enter into 

 human food ; or, of the hundred different vegetable tissues, from all climes, 

 that enter into the constituency of human apparel ; or, of the hundreds of 

 mineral and vegetable substances that enter into the various arts of life ? 

 If subjects like these do not awaken the dormant energies of the mind, it 

 is difficult to tell what will do it. 



A better book than this, on the same plan, might possibly be made. 

 Possibly we might have made a better one. If so, it would doubtless 

 be difficult to satisfy the public that our reason is good for not doing it. 

 We are not quite satisfied with that reason ourself. However, we have 

 some grounds of justification. Even doing what we have done was a 

 mental and physical toil exceeding the prudence every one should exercise 

 in regard to the preservation of his own life and health. Our voyage on 

 the ocean of life has already been somewhat long. Our bark has been 

 deeply laden, and sometimes feebly manned. And, above all, we have 

 sometimes had stormy weather. Hence to keep the -ship in order, the hull 

 well trimmed, the deck well swept, and the sails well set, has left but little 

 time to make fanciful observation and embellishment. Such a mariner 

 has but little leisure for his log book, or to look at the stars to watch 

 their transits, their declinations, or their ascensions. To leave our tropes : 

 it is sufficient to %ay, that during the present winter, in addition to a general 

 out-door supervision on the farm, and to writing for a dozen periodicals, the 

 present volume is the firstborn of a twin progeny, for which we must assume 

 the paternity. The only mitigation in the responsibility lies in the fact that 

 more than one half of this one was prepared several years ago. and has 

 not, perhaps, received the thorough revision, which a longer experience 

 could have given it. 



Men of enterprise and energy are under the guidance of destiny or 

 Providence. They are carried forward whither they had not dreamed. 

 They make their own pathway, without landmarks, before them. Others 

 follow in their track, and those possessed of sufficient genius sometimes 

 embellish the fabric devised for them. They are welcome to do it, so far 

 as our hasty productions can be made available to public utility. None 

 have but a temporary proprietorship in the avails of the mind or of the 

 soil. Both, at short intervals, are to be merged again and again, succes- 

 sively, to the end of time, in the common joint stock for all the successive 

 members of the human family. It is the duty of each one to add to this 

 stock all in his power ; and, on the other hand, not to waste any of it, and 

 to use as little of it as practicable for his own individual convenience. 



J. L. B. 



NEW YORK, March 20th 1852 



