PREFACE. 



IT is the design of the author, in all his labors for rural localities, to 

 improve the mind as well as the soil. Indeed, such labors for the former 

 will ultimately prove of more benefit than those having exclusive reference 

 to the latter. If the one is duly promoted, the other will follow in its 

 wake. Whenever a rural population becomes imbued with a well culti- 

 vated literary taste and a love of science, there need be no apprehension 

 that agriculture will be neglected, or that it will fail to be duly appreci- 

 ated. Rarely will the soil receive a defective culture, except from the 

 ignorant and the illiterate. 



It has sometimes been thought by farmers that a book, having particu- 

 lar reference to their vocati6n, is necessarily filled with oxides and silicates, 

 or with sulphates and phosphates that the mental food of the scientific 

 agriculturist is a compound of caustics and volatilized poisons; and that 

 his very breath and clothes are so impregnated with carbonates and alka- 

 lies, that they cannot approach him without experiencing a kind of suffoca- 

 tion. Misapprehensions of this sort must be removed. Prejudices of this 

 nature must be overcome. If not, the treasures of chemical knowledge will 

 do little in renovating the soil. On the contrary, sterility will increase, 

 till the wand of desolation passes over the broad earth. We labor to over- 

 come these obstacles to progress in rural economy. 



To this end we connect, in a book for a rural population, with the 

 topics more immediately interesting to the husbandman, brief sketches of 

 political economy. What is better calculated to awaken attention in the 

 producers of wealth, than to be taught the channels in which it is made to 

 flow ? And, we connect with them brief sketches of natural history and 

 domestic economy. Is there nothing in these to cast a charm upon his 

 hitherto dreary pathway ? Is there nothing in these to impart bright and 

 cheering gleams amidst the dark shadows of his monotonous and wearied 

 life? The records of animal and vegetable physiology are the gems of our 

 best literature. There is a richness in them found nowhere else. Com- 

 pared with them other records are insipid. The same laws which regulate 

 the growth of farm animals, regulate the growth of all animals spread over 

 the wide creation, whether of tiny or gigantic dimensions. The same 

 laws which regulate the vegetable tissues of the farmer's garden and grass 

 fields, regulate the lofty trees, the magnificent foliage, and the rich fruits 

 of the tropics. All these are kindred subjects. Is it no rational source of 



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