MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



pabulum which agricultural employments fur- 

 nish for intellectual activity. The rural ad- 

 venturer may not only regale himself with a 

 considerable series of nice chemical puzzles at 

 every cropping-time, but he may give his 

 thoughts to original investigation of the habits 

 of the plants themselves; the career of a De- 

 candolle could have had no finer start-point 

 than a country farm with its living herbaria, 

 and its opportunities for observation ; we want 

 a good monograph of our great national crop 

 of maize — so soon as the man shall appear to 

 make it. We want, too, some Buff on (without 

 his foppery) to unearth our field-mice, and to 

 put a great tribe of insect depredators to flight. 



AESTHETICS OF THE BUSINESS 



What is needed, perhaps more than all else, in 

 our agricultural regions, is — such intelligible, 

 imitable, and economic demonstrations of the 

 laws of good taste, as shall provoke emulation, 

 and redeem the small farmer — unwittingly, it 

 may be — from his slovenly barbarities and his 

 grossness of life. Here is verge, surely, for a 

 man's cultivation, for his aptitude, and for 

 those graces which shall fix his attachment 

 while they plead their lessons of appeal. 



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