232 Thoughts on Requisites of Farming. [May, 



every field of human interest, and scattered blessings innumerable 

 on every hand, it seemed, until within the last few years, that 

 this, the oldest department of man's labors, was to go down to 

 posterity unchanged from what it was, in times long past, beyond 

 which no record extends. 



Agriculture, ten years ago, was but little different in discovered 

 and established principles, from what it was two thousand years 

 ago. The bard of Mantua wrote with as much philosophy on the 

 conduct of the farm, as many who have written for agricultural 

 journals within our own observation. 



The essays that have appeared in this countr}', and especially 

 in Europe, within the last two years, on the failure of the potatoe 

 crop, will stand a monument of the knowledge of vegetable phy- 

 siology at the piesent time. While some of them, perhaps one 

 in ten, are profound, and do honor to science, the others exhibit a 

 heedlessness of all principle, that is truly astonishing, when we 

 consider the sources whence some of them have emanated. If it 

 was not that the essays were on farming, we should imagine our- 

 selves carried back to the days of Paracelsus and Albertus Mag- 

 nus; for in no other department of human knowledge could so 

 palpable violations of all known principles be advanced, and not 

 bring on the heads of the perpetrators the just retribution of uni- 

 versal contempt. 



But, in farming and animal magnetism, impunity reigns over 

 all absurdities! 



It has been an established idea, it would seem, that to WTite for 

 farmers, articles that they would read and appreciate, one must 

 deal in a certain class of facts. They must be " practical facts;" 

 they must be facts not too far removed from dollars and cents. 

 To descend to elementary principles, and get to the origin of 

 things, is getting too far removed from the " primum mobile^' of 

 the farmer's efforts. We reverse in this department, the ancient 

 adage, " Qui a nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem."* We 

 have been attempting to get at the kernel, without first cracking 

 the nut ; and after centuries have past, we find the science of ag- 

 riculture " in statu qtio." The nut must be cracked by every one 

 who expects to manage a farm in a rational and consistent man- 

 ner. In other words, he must commence and learn the very ele- 

 ments of his science, and let a nobler motive than the mere accu- 

 mulation of money animate him; and even if it should not, the 

 right way is the surest way in the long run, even if we can be 

 moved only by gain. If it has been the case, that the empirical 

 practice has been the prevailing one over this interesting and im- 

 portant field, we mistake the signs of the times, if there is not a 



• He who would eal the meat, must first crack the nut. 



