92 Fanners' .Miscellany. [July, 



the question we are about to answer, and we hope to do so in a 

 way to open your eyes to the truth. 



The products of a farm must be adapted to the peculiar circiun- 

 stances under which it is situated — its value in monev — its conti- 

 guity to, or remoteness from market — the cost of growing, and 

 the price in market, &c. And here is the point where our lead- 

 ing, or would be leading men in agriculture, have missed the 

 mark. I have already made it sufficiently manifest that, because 

 a man owns a farm and cultivates it, is no reason why he should 

 raise every product which will grow under his latitude. Better 

 by far would it be for him, if he would grow some one product 

 which would pay him. 



The character of the soil — its chemical and mechanical pro- 

 perties, are important to be known and understood, but the cha- 

 racter of the market is a matter of greater moment. By the 

 proper application of manures, and good cultivation of the soil, 

 a man utterly unversed in the science of the thing, may gather 

 large crops and remunerating ones, if he has an eye to the mar- 

 ket he is to sell in, otherwise he will find it a losing game. It 

 should be the object of leading men, to show the practical farmer 

 the true extent and the proper bearing of his resources, before 

 anything else. If, in the state of New York, the same efforts 

 had been made to induce farmers to adapt their labor and skill to 

 the circumstances under which they live, that have been made to 

 induce them to become scientific men, we should now probably 

 see a large part of the state a garden, compared with its existing 

 barrenness. There has been too much loose and indefinite and 

 unpointed direction to the business of farming, for a few years 

 past. Instead of pointing out distinctly the direction in which 

 the labor of the farmer can be applied so as to be most produc- 

 tive; instead of investigating dispassionately the condition under - 

 which the farmers in the different parts of this widely- extended 

 country are placed, all efforts to improve his position and to ad- 

 vance the art have been a sort of vague inducement to him to try 

 to increase and improve himself in the production of those very 

 articles in the production of which he has to compete with new 



