246 Ensilage. 



should write out his experience in book form, it 

 would be denounced as book farming? Whence do 

 farmers' sons get the idea that, as soon as they ob- 

 tain an education, there is no use for it on the 

 farm? They are sent to school, taught chemistry, 

 botany, engineering, and surveying, but from their 

 fathers' examples they have learned to think that 

 such an education may do well enough for a book- 

 keeper or a dry-goods clerk, but to apply such 

 knowledge to an agricultural pursuit is all wrong; 

 it is book farming, and yet it is knowledge that can 

 be put to practical use on the farm. 



Do farmers mean to acknowledge that their pro- 

 fession requires less intelligence than others? 



What is there in farming that requires a man to 

 be ignorant? Must a farmer, in getting on in the 

 world, move backward like a crab, or as Mark Twain 

 says of the inhabitants of the Azores Islands, among 

 whom all efforts to introduce new and improved 

 methods of farming have failed: "The peasants 

 crossed themselves, and prayed to God to shield 

 them from all blasphemous desire to know more 

 than their fathers did before them "? 



These questions I will leave the reader to solve. 

 However, I will venture to suggest as a remedy, a 

 better education for the future farmer. The great 

 problem of feeding and clothing the millions de- 

 pends upon the success of agriculture, and requires 

 of its followers a knowledge that embraces a wider 

 and more liberal education than any other pursuit. 



Said the late President Garfield : " At the head of 



