PREFACE. 



WHEN I began the preparation of THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK 

 CYCLOPEDIA I asked myself the question, Why add another to the 

 ?/^ multiplied list of books already written on farm topics? I was aware 

 that the ground had been thoroughly covered. We have books on all the 

 special departments of the farm ; agricultural cyclopedias, and books on 

 agricultural chemistry, botany, and other sciences with which the farmer needs 

 more or less to be familiar. Many of these are of great value, and should be 

 found in the library of every intelligent farmer ; and it is not my purpose or 

 expectation to produce a book that will supersede them. 



There is one fact connected with our agricultural literature which has led 

 me to undertake this work, and that is that few books have been written by 

 practical farmers. Farmers as a rule are too busy to write books, particularly 

 in their younger days, and after years of labor have stiffened the muscles few 

 n of them ever take up the pen to record their experiences for the instruction 

 J* of their fellow-laborers. This was my own experience, for up to the age of 

 forty I had never written a line for publication. Beginning life on the farm 

 with no capital, and dependent on my hands for whatever of success I might 

 attain, I had no time to write of what I was doing. During these years I 

 was impressed with the fact that the farmer, isolated as he is, often learns 

 2 from experience, obtained at great cost of time and labor, that which perhaps 

 qe a neighbor could have told him, and a single item in an agricultural paper has 

 2 often been worth to me many dollars; but still oftener I have, after years of 

 * experiment and costly failure, settled some simple fact and been led to exclaim, 

 Why could not some older and more experienced farmer have told me this? 

 A little more than ten years ago I wrote my first article for publication. 

 ^ I began writing of the daily experiences of farm life, sometimes telling that 

 which I thought would be helpful to others, but oftener asking for informa- 

 g tion which I stood in need of. These articles, under the title of "Highland 

 Farm Papers," were continued for many years, and were received with such 

 favor by their readers that the work of writing for the agricultural press grew 

 on my hands, and during the past three years I have been constnntly em- 

 ployed in writing for the leading agricultural papers both East and West. In 

 1882 I published a book of 250 pages, entitled Success in Farming, which 

 met with favor and reached a third edition within ten months. It will readily 

 be seen that the present book is a natural outgrowth of the labors and thought 



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