166 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



refreshing slumbers, and while engaged in it, I can 

 think as accurately as under any other conditions 

 whatever. Indeed, if I were called upon to pre- 

 pare a public address, an article for the press, or 

 to engage in any other intellectual exercise, I 

 could fix upon and arrange my subject, and bring 

 to it quite as much vigor of thought and shape it 

 into as logical an arrangement, as under any other 

 circumstances. 



My friend, you will find more or less philosophy 

 connected with the proper performance of almost 

 any of the methods of agriculture ; and that many 

 subjects, requiring further scientific inquiry, exist 

 in even the commonest operations of husbandry. 

 Your soils need to be fully understood, that you 

 may supply their wants and correct their super- 

 fluities. The various ingredients or properties of 

 your manures must be known, together with the 

 theory of composting, and must be applied proper- 

 ly. The properties that go to make up your crops 

 must be found out, so that you may best adapt 

 the crops to the soil, or if your soil is deficient in 

 ingredients requisite to the raising of some desira- 

 ble crop, they must be supplied by proper ma- 

 nures and cultivation. Fruits, for home-use and 

 for sale, must be produced, aud a world of scien- 

 tific investigation may be well employed, in find- 

 ing out their best management, the character and 

 habits of insects injurious to them, and the best 

 means of preventing their depredations. The 

 wet lands must be properly drained, which requires 

 a combination of science with practice. Irriga- 

 tion produces wonderful effects, may perhaps be 

 within your reach, and its theory and best man- 

 agement must be found out. The philosophy of 

 breeding domestic animals, a beautiful and inter- 

 esting study, generally poorly understood and mis- 

 erably practiced in our country, must be investi- 

 gated. 



So I might go on, enumerating a great variety 

 of subjects, or entering into detail with those I 

 have glanced at. But these now named are suffi- 

 cient for illustration, and they show that an abso- 

 lutely limitless field of inquiry, involving the prin- 

 ciples of several sciences, is opened to the farmer, 

 in the prosecution of his daily business. It is his 

 high privilege, in the very act of earning his bread, 

 to come into intimate contact with the wonderful 

 operations of nature. If he be a man fond of in- 

 tellectual inquiry and improvement, he will be con- 

 vinced at every step in his pursuits, that to be "a 

 workman that needeth not to be ashamed" of his 

 farming, he must keep his mind all awake and in 

 action, and by observation and study must endeav- 

 or to understand nature. The more his mind rises 

 to a perception of the works of Deity, the more 

 will it be filled with astonishment and delight at 

 their minuteness and comprehensiveness, their 

 beauty and grandeur, and so far as he can follow 

 them, the exact laws which regulate and control 

 all animate and inanimate nature. In proportion 

 as he closely investigates, so will he perceive that 

 the meanest of those works is inexhaustible ; and 

 therefore I say, show me a man of such high endow- 

 ments of mind, or such scientific attainments, that 

 his every energy may not find full employment in 

 unravelling nature as connected with practical ag- 

 riculture, and will not, after all his efforts, be con- 

 strained to admit that there are yet unexplored re- 

 gions beyond his researches, and I will show you 

 a man, the equal of whom does not exist ; and I 



further say, that farming is not necessarily that 

 merely "sublunary pursuit, providing only for the 

 terrestrial wants of man," which you suppose it to 

 be ; but on the contrary, properly understood and 

 conducted, it combines as much of the practical 

 and scientific, has legitimately connected with it 

 as much of the poetical and sublime, is as dignified 

 in itself, and as elevating to the mind of man, 

 as any other pm-suit ; and leading us directly to 

 a perusal of the works of Deity, as written on 

 his ample page of nature, we may emphatically 

 gain that knowledge, fresh from the fountain-head, 

 which is "not only calculated to make us wiser 

 and better, and to fit us to enjoy pleasures which 

 we would otherwise be unable to attain in time, 

 but also when time shall be no more." 



I have been thus earnest in stating the case as I 

 understand it, because our agriculture has been 

 quite long enough cursed with a prevailing senti- 

 ment that the farmer does not need much knowl- 

 edge, and could not use it practically and profita- 

 bly if he had it. It is claimed by many that the 

 principles of correct cultivation are few, and all 

 found out ; that farming is a mere monotonous 

 routine, for physical labor to conduct ; that he is 

 the best farmer who can do the biggest day's work 

 with his hands, who can skin his farm the cleanest 

 and put the proceeds of its fertility at interest, 

 spending little or nothing for the improvement of 

 himself and family, and nothing to make home at- 

 tractive. 



Talk to many of our people of the advantages 

 of applying the sciences to the cultivation of the 

 ground, and about better educating the farmer, 

 and they will tell you that it is simply ridiculous 

 nonsense. I say that these things are a curse to 

 agriculture every way ; and particularly so be- 

 cause many of our brightest and most enterprising 

 young men, sickening at the thought of engaging 

 in a pursuit thus advocated and practiced, and un- 

 willing 



"To drudge through weary life without the aid 

 Of intellectual implements and tools," 



go off to other pursuits, when, if they could have 

 had one-half the thorough training to fit them for 

 farming which they were obliged to go through to 

 be prepared for some other pursuit, we should now 

 see much more of correct, profitable cultivation 

 than is seen. 



I have to say to you, in conclusion, my young 

 friend, that if you wish for a field of honorable use- 

 fulness second to no other, for a naturally dignified 

 pursuit, where cultivated intellect may find full 

 scope, where by a practically judicious application 

 of the natural sciences which illustrate agricul- 

 ture you may wield a large influence for good to 

 others, then stick to your farming. True, it will 

 not bring you great wealth ; that is with difficulty 

 attained, by comparatively a few ; it usually re- 

 quires of him who seeks it the devotion of his ev- 

 ery energy, while it is not his greatest good, but 

 but sometimes proves an evil, either to himself or 

 children. But an enlightened cultivation of the 

 earth will give you a competence, and will prove 

 favorable to mental culture and virtue. Your 

 home, though modest and unexpensive, may be 

 adorned in many little ways which will tend to 

 make it the tasteful and fitting abode of virtue. 

 A moderate outlay will, in these days of improve- 

 ment, furnish you an assortment of the very best 

 books, so that seated before your hearth you may 



