1186 STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE. Part IV. 



To do this effectually, some knowledge of sketching is of great use, and, if possible, 

 ouf^ht to be acquired by every person intending to fill the situation of bailiff or steward. 

 The knowledge of soils, plants, and their culture, is a very simple business compared 

 with the knowledge of stock, which is not only of difficult and tedious acquirement 

 but easily forgotten or lost : for one gentleman's bailiff that knows any thing of stock 

 there are at least a score that know nothing. 



7 1 58. In connection with professional studies, the pupil may find it necessary, if his edu- 

 cation has been neglected, to go on at his leisure hours with all the usual branches of edu- 

 cation, either assisted by books alone, or by books and the best assistance he can procure. 

 If his school education has extended to arithmetic, mensuration, mathematics, and draw- 

 ing, he should occupy himself in acquiring a knowledge of botany, zoology, geology, and 

 mineralogy, without a tolerable knowledge of each of which, he will ever be in the 

 dark among modern agriculturists, and in reading books on the subject. Next, let him 

 study the various arts and manufactures that have any relation to agriculture, and store 

 his mind with all he can acquire from one of the best general Encyclojicedias, as that of 

 Rees, or the Encyclopcedia Britannica, with its excellent supplementary volumes. If 

 he will go farther, and if he wishes to know the extent to which he may go, he may 

 consult what we have advanced on the subject of education in the Encyclopcedia of 

 Gardening. 



Sect. III. Of the Conduct and Economy of an Agriculturists Life. 



7159. A plan for the general conduct of life should be fixed on by every one when he 

 arrives at manhood, and steadily pursued for the time to come ; most commonly such a 

 plan is formed by the parents soon after the child's birth, and at the latest, when the boy 

 is taken from school. The boy arrived at manhood, however, is entitled to examine 

 this plan, and amend it, or devise another more congenial to his own notions ; but the 

 risk of any change of this sort by persons so young and inexperienced is so great, that 

 no youth ought to venture on it without the utmost consideration and the firmest per- 

 suasion in his own mind : where the parent has done his duty, such changes of plan will 

 not often be attempted, for, by the early infusion into the mind of a child, ideas of the 

 pursuit that is intended for him, a taste for that pursuit or employment will grow up 

 with him, and become as it were his own natural inclination. This will happen in most 

 cases, but in some children the bias or force of nature for some particular purpose is so 

 strong, that by no parental intreaties or reasoning can it be overcome ; even where a 

 sense of duty has induced compliance with a parent's wishes for a time, the dormant in- 

 clination has at last broke out and taken the lead. In such cases, the parent may 

 generally conclude, that where the pursuit or purpose is not bad, the force of natural 

 inclination will be more likely to command success than the influence of parental au- 

 thority, and that a pursuit or business, commonly of little profit or repute, will be more 

 profitable and respectable when followed by a genius powerfully impelled to it, than a 

 profitable and reputable business followed by any one against their inclination. 



7160. The plan and conduct of life is in rnost cases deterrnined by accidental circMrnstances. The son of 

 the laboring man grows up without any regular training or education for a particular end, and finds him- 

 self at the age of manhood engaged in rural labor, and apparently incapable of any other; his notions and 

 his ambition are so limited that he dare not venture to desire a change for the better, for no man ever 

 desires that which he thinks impossible to attain, and the mere idea of this impossibility, however erro- 

 neous, effectually restrains the attempt at improvement. The life of the ploughman or laborer, much as 

 it differs from that of a man of eminent natural powers and superior education, is capable of much amelio- 

 ration by being directed to a suitable end or object as the ultimatum, or in other words, by proceeding on a 

 plan ; plan indeed, as we have elsewhere observed, {Encycof Gard. 2nd edit. 7778.) is predestination, as 

 conduct is fate. 



7161. The greater part of manMnd enter on life without anyjixed plan or object in view, or if they form 

 some general notion of acquiring wealth or distinction, they form no plan by which it is to be accom- 

 plished ; the consequence is, that such persons after blundering on through their best years, arrive at the 

 end without having gained anything but experience, now of no use to them. No man is born in posses- 

 sion of the art of living, any more than of the art of agriculture ; the one requires to be studied as well as 

 the other, and a man can no more expect permanent satisfaction from actions performed at random, than 

 he can expect a good crop from seeds sown without due regard to soil and season : when we look round 

 and observe the quantity of misery in the world, the greater proportion is, or seems to be, the result of a 

 want of plan, or of a bad plan of life : how many parents are unsuccessful in their struggles to maintain a 

 large family, the result of too early marriages : how many find themselves arrive at old age with no 

 other resource for support but charity, the consequence of want of foresight in expenditure : how many- 

 are suffering under poverty, brought on by their own want of frugality, or positive extravagance ; or 

 imder disease from excesses and irregularities committed in the hey-day of life : and how many among 

 those not born to inherit property, who, at no period of their life, have any other alternative between 

 hard labor and deficient food, than disease and want. 



7162. Want of plan may not in every case be the cause of all this misery, because, accident enters into 

 life for something, both in the unfavorable as well as the favorable side of the question; but we have 

 no hesitation in asserting, that want of plan, as a cause of misery, is as ninety-nine to a hundred : any 

 plan at all, even a bad plan, is better than none, because those who set out on any plan will, in all pro- 

 bability, sooner discover its errors, if a bad one, and correct them, than those who set out on no plan, will 

 discover the want of one, and form a good plan. The young man who is just setting out in life, may well 

 tremble at the consequences of proceeding on the journey without the guide of a judicious plan ; this plan 

 he must form himself, because he alone feels what he wants, and what he can do to gratify them ; all 

 that we can do is to offer a few hints. 



7163. In order to he able to form a plan it is previously necessary to determine the object to be attained 



