336 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



harmony under the same roof. If two or three grown 

 brothers, with a father and families, ever passed together a 

 continuous, pleasant and profitable life, it is very exceptional. 



The attempts formerly made, — now happily rare, — of 

 keeping the boys on the farm by its division among sons, 

 the old father retaining only a life support, have too often 

 resulted in unseemly and distressing quarrels. Quite as 

 impracticable and impossible would it be to divide among 

 two or three sons a farm of a hundred acres, — " suitably 

 divided," as an advertisement would read, "into mowing, 

 tillage and pasture, with wood enough for family use, a 

 never-failing well, and running water to the barn." Mani- 

 festly, this could not be done ; and the only way to keep boys 

 on a farm would be for one to buy an adjacent property, 

 paying what money he had earned since he was one and 

 twenty, mortgjiging the farm for the remainder, and getting 

 the old man to sign his notes. 



Now, arrangements being made for but one of the boys to 

 stay on the farm, what is to become of the others, and of the 

 sisters, who certainly are worthy of equal consideration, 

 though they seldom receive it? They must go. So much 

 for the practical and personal side of this question. 



But there is another matter involved in this ' ' keeping 

 the boys on the farm," broader and more important, in a 

 political sense. History shows that the permanent coloniza- 

 tion, settlement and cultivation of new territory is always 

 (with the exception of nomadic races, who move in 

 tribes) accomplished by individual action of the young, 

 hardy, restless and persevering members of the community. 

 The promptings for this migratory tendency are various, 

 never so well illustrated as in the history of our own State 

 and of this whole country : ' * freedom to worship God ; " 

 the search for gold and other precious and useful metals ; a 

 desire for more genial skies and a richer soil, which should 

 yield its abundance uncumbered with thorns and thistles, 

 and un watered by the sweat of the face ; and a restless, ad- 

 venturous desire to penetrate the unknown, and to see and 

 to try something new. 



But, were we of the Aryan race not thus possessed of 

 this roving tendency, there would in time have come an 



