24 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



farming, cannot be produced in a day or a year. It is not suffi- 

 cient only to inform and enlighten the few — to arouse here and there 

 one to the task of personal reformation — it is not sufficient even, 

 that the leading agriculturists of the country should be aroused to 

 the application of new principles and practices — but in such a 

 country as this the whole mass must work together in order to 

 produce any result that will be appreciable to any but the closest 

 observer. It is true that the tendency of knowledge, among a 

 free people, is to spread and diffuse itself among all — yet when 

 the prejudices, and those ingrained into the nature of the mass of 

 American farmers, are considered — when it is remembered that 

 they have to unlearn every thing in order to learn any thing — 

 that a man must be convinced he is wrong before he will learn to do 

 right — must be conscious of his ignorance before he will consent 

 to be instructed — when all these circumstances are taken into the 

 account, it cannot perhaps be matter of surprise to any that so lit- 

 tle progress has as yet been made in this country in rational farm- 

 ing. As long as a man believes he has arrived at perfection, it is 

 the veriest folly to try to improve him. It is a question then of no 

 small importance — " What is to be done for American Agriculture ?" 



It is matter of congratulation, no less to the patriot and the po- 

 litical economist than to the farmer himself, that something has 

 already been done. A different system is beginning to prevail, 

 and although it may not appear to a superficial observer, yet by 

 one who refers to the practices of former years and compares them 

 with the present, much will be seen to convince him that farming 

 is undergoing a slow and gradual but sure change for the better. 

 Call it rational — mental — scientific, or what we will — its efforts 

 are beginning to be felt and will continue to increase. We see 

 this in the large tracts of land that have been and are being re- 

 deemed from waste — in the restoration, in some parts of the coun- 

 try, of exhausted soil — in the improvement of stock and the dis- 

 position to obtain improved breeds — in the multiplied production 

 of better farming implements, which can only be made in such 

 abundance to supply an increasing demand — but in nothing more 

 than in the growing desire for information shown in the increase 

 of agricultural papers and books. And we hail all these as indi- 

 cations of the dawning of a new era in farming. 



In replying to the question at the head of this paper, we shall 



