110 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



directed by a mere lad, who was placed in charge by the pro- 

 prietor during his absence. The boy had no experience, and 

 his judgment was of course limited, but he found counsel and 

 guidance in the diaries which had been accurately kept on the 

 same farm for nearly twenty years preceding. Selecting the 

 records of what had been done in years of similar temperature, 

 he not only managed the work creditably, but left none of the 

 minor details undone. [A specimen of the diaries referred to 

 above, is annexed to this Essay.] 



Would it not be beneficial to agriculture, if the societies in- 

 stituted for its advancement, gave a certain sum for every well 

 kept diary of a farm situated within their respective localities, 

 with premiums for those which displayed the most industry 

 and ability on their pages ? By requiring them to be written 

 on paper of a uniform size, several volumes might be annually 

 added to the library of the society, and from them might be 

 compiled and condensed an agricultural history of each year. 

 Valuable, to the young farmer at home, as well as to the scien- 

 tific agriculturist abroad, would be such a chronicle ; and why 

 cannot the society in Essex county take the lead in this, as it 

 has in other valuable movements ? 



Farm Accounts are of equal importance to individuals, al- 

 though they are not of the same public value as diaries, unless 

 when questions come up relative to the comparative profit of 

 different soils, or of different applications of the same soil. 

 " There is not a single step," says Mr. Young, in the twenty- 

 eighth volume of his Annals of Agriculture, " in the life of a 

 farmer, that does not prove the advantage of his keeping regu- 

 lar accounts, and yet there is not one in a thousand that keeps 

 any. This is one, among the many instances, which in the 

 enlightened situation of the practisers of the art, is the evi- 

 dent reason for the backwardness in which the art is found, by 

 any man who searches for the principles deduced from a prac- 

 tice, which ought to give it the regularity of a cultivated 

 science." 



A few rough memoranda or figures, to yield a gross account 

 of the general receipts or payments, usually constitute the 

 entire financial record of our farmers, even those who amass 



