1184 STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE. Part IV, 



architecture, and working engineers of the strength of materials ; and these kinds of 

 knowledge are acquired by them without an hour's interruption of their daily labor_^; 

 on the contrary, the habit of evening study renders them more steady, sober, and indus- 

 trious than other workmen ; than bricklayers and paper hangers, for example, whose 

 employments require much less intellectual skill. If every cook-maid, before she could 

 obtain a first-rate place, were required to be able to read Apicius Redivivus in the ori-. 

 ginal tongue, there would be no want of learned cooks ; and if no bailiff could obtain 

 a first-rate situation who had not written a thesis in Greek, or who had not made the 

 tour of Europe, there would soon be found abundance of bailiffs so qualified. A Cale- 

 donian, when he comes to the low country, soon acquires the English tongue, and if he 

 has been taught latin, thus knows three languages. The servants at the inns on some 

 parts of the continent, frequented by different nations, often acquire a moderate know- 

 ledge of three or four languages : a late custom-house officer on the island of Constadt, 

 spoke and wrote ten languages ; and. the bar-maid at the hotel de Londres, at which we 

 lodged in Moscow, in 1814, could make herself intelligible in Swedish, Russian, Polish, 

 German, French, Italian, and English. 



7147. The certain xvay of obtaining anything, i^ to he impressed with the necessity of 

 possessing it, either to avoid the evil of being without it, to satisfy the desires of others 

 as to ourselves, or our own desires. There is scarcely any thing that a rational man 

 can desire that he may not obtain, by maintaining on his mind a powerful impression of 

 the necessity of obtaining it ; pursuing the means of attainment with unceasing perse- 

 verance, ^and keeping alive that enthusiasm and ardor which always accompany power- 

 ful desires. All may not acquire by the same degree of labor, the same degree of emi- 

 nence ; but any man by labor may attain a knowledge of all that is already known on 

 any subject, and that degree of knowledge is respectable j what many never attain to, 

 and what few go beyond. 



7148. The grand drawback to every kind of improvement is, the vulgar and degrading 

 idea that certain things are beyond our reach; whereas the truth is, every thing is at- 

 tainable by the employment of means ; and nothing, not even the knowledge of a 

 common laborer, without it : there are many things* which it is not desirable to wish 

 for, and which are only desired by men of extraordinary minds ; but let no man fancy 

 any thing is impossible to him, for this is the bane of all improvement. Let no young 

 ploughman, therefore, who reads this, even if he can but barely read, imagine that he 

 mav not become eminent in any of the pursuits of life or departments of knowledge, 

 much less in that of his profession : let him never lose sight of this principle that to 

 desire and apply is to attain, and that the attainment will be in proportion to the appli- 

 cation. 



Sect. II. Of the Professional Education of Agriculturists. 



7149. In order that a jirofessional man should excel as such, every other acquirement 

 must be kept subservient to that of his profession. No branch of knowledge should be 

 pursued to any extent that, either of itself, or by the habits of thinking to which it gives 

 rise, tends to divert the mind from the main object of pursuit ; something, it is true, is 

 due to relaxation in every species of acquirement ; but judicious relaxation only serves 

 to whet the appetite for the vigorous pursuit of the main object. By the professional edu- 

 cation of agriculturists, we mean that direction of their faculties by which they will best 

 acquire the science and manual operations of agriculture, and we shall suppose agri- 

 cultural pupils generally, to have no other scholastic education than some knowledge of 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic. 



7 1 50. All young men loho intend embracing agriculture as a profession, whether as plough- 

 men, bailifJs, stewards, land valuers, or rent-paying farmers, ought to undergo a course 

 of manual labor for one or more years, in order to acquire the mechanism of all 

 agricultural operations : when the pupil is not destined for any particular county, 

 then he should be sent to a farmer in a district of mixed agriculture ; as for example. 

 East Lothian, where he would, if placed in a wheat and bean culture farm, see at no 

 great distance the turnip system and feeding, and a few miles off, the mountain 

 sheep-farming or breeding : when the pupil is intended to be settled in any particu- 

 lar county, he ought to be sent to a county as near as possible of similar soil and 

 climate, where the best practices are in use, as from all the turnip counties, pupils 

 should go to Northumberland or Berwickshire ; from the clay counties to East 

 Lothian, or the carse of Gowrie ; from a mountainous district to the Cheviot hills, 

 and Tweed ale, &c. 



7151. .The term of apprenticeship completed, the future time of the pupil ought to be 

 regulated according to the ultimate object in view : if he is intended as a ploughman, 

 shepherd, or hedger, perhaps to introduce new practices in other counties, he may re- 

 main for a year or two longer with other mastei^ in the same district, in order not 



