XIV INTRODUCTION. 



profitable cultivation of which they must depend for their 

 subsistence and advancement in the world. 



Much useful information, on the various departments of 

 rural economy, has, within these few years, been accumulated 

 in various parts of the world by the labours of men of science, 

 to diffuse which among our farmers and landed proprietors, 

 and to exhibit its application to the pecuhar circumstances of 

 this country, in language divested as much as possible of those 

 scientific terms which appear so repulsive to ordinary readers, 

 will be the object of these First Lessons. To assist in some 

 degree in difi"using such knowledge among our countrymen, 

 so as to promote that desire for improvement, which, after a 

 long space of inactivity, is beginning to influence the public 

 mind, I conceive to be a work worthy of the co-operation of all 

 who take an interest in Ireland. To show that such a desire 

 exists at the present time, it is only necessary to point to 

 the agricultural schools which are springing up in so many 

 localities — to the new spirit which has been awakened in the 

 older educational institutions — to an institution established 

 among the tenants and proprietors of our northern province, 

 for the express purpose of making the farmer acquainted with 

 the principles of his profession — to our valuable native 

 journals, devoted exclusively to agriculture, and commanding 

 a large circulation — all these things are gratifying evidences 

 that, as a nation, we have begun to devote ourselves to 

 the subjects which are best calculated to advance our prospe- 

 rity and to earn for us the respect and esteem of other 

 countries. 



One great obstacle to the improvement of agriculture is 

 the custom which yet too commonly prevails, of regarding it 

 solely as an art, requiring merely a certain amount of 

 practical skill for its successful prosecution; and, whilst the 

 vitriol manufacturer, the bleacher, the sugar-refiner, and the 

 dyer, are conducting their processes in strict accordance with 

 certain scientific principles, and whilst every year new appli- 

 cations of chemical knowledge enable them to work with 

 gi-eater certainty and economy, the manufacture of food, by 

 far the most important to human existence, has been left to 

 the direction of men utterly unacquainted with either the 

 materials upon which it is their business to operate, or the 

 conditions required to render their work successful. Whilst 

 in the factory and the manufactoiy not only the managers are 



