1847.] Thoughts on Requisites of Farming. 231 



them not. He may revel on her bounties, and behold not the array 

 of means and agencies employed in their production. He may 

 be like the ass in the china shop, unmindful of the skill and beau- 

 ty of the works by which he is surrounded. 



To understand the constitution of the various objects with 

 which the farmer has to deal, and the laws by which their pro- 

 duction is governed, and the agencies by which they may be mod- 

 ified and changed, needs much mental labor and diligent observa- 

 tion. To be an intelligent farmer, in other words, puts in requi- 

 sition all the powers of the best intellect. He needs to go to the 

 bottom of things. Superficial knowledge is of no use to him. 

 He must learn the very elements; and commencing at these, go 

 by actual observation through secondary causes as far as the pre- 

 sent state of knowledge permits, and press with untiring industry 

 to the point of observation where he may see through Nature, 

 Nature's God. To get to that point of vision — the highest in- 

 tended to be reached by man, and at a lower point he need not 

 stop — from which he may see on the one hand the mighty energy 

 that moves the universe, and on the other the vast and compli- 

 cated machinery of which it is composed, moving with no jarring 

 pinions or clashing wheels, but all is harmony and order, where 

 to our untrained faculties all seems confusion, and the accomplish- 

 ments of chance. Instead of practical results, the farmer needs 

 principles. Empiricism has been here the ruling goddess, for 

 ages past; and the opposing and conflicting results, which her 

 labors produce, teach us, if we will learn, that she is not to be 

 trusted. Experiments, to be useful, must be guided by an intelli- 

 gence derived from a careful study of the conditions of existence, 

 and the modifying influences to which the objects of experiment 

 are subject. 



We would not be understood to say that blind experiment has 

 never accomplished any good result; far from it. The experi- 

 ments of late years, in the various subjects of the farming inter- 

 ests, are signs of better times. Although these experiments have 

 been guided generally by no principle, and in perfect ignorance 

 of the simplest laws that govern animal and vegetable being; yet 

 they have conducted to many empirical results of high value. 

 That these experiments have been made in ignorance, and with- 

 out principle, our agricultural journals and reports teem with 

 proof. The labors and treatises of the alchymist of the middle 

 ages, bear the same relation to the science of chemistry now, that 

 the practice of farmers and our agricultural journals do to the 

 true science of farming. This noble department of human indus- 

 try — the one on which all others directly or indirectly depend, 

 has been the last to receive an impulse from modern discoveries. 

 While the raasnificent results of scientific research have enriched 



