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the profit and loss account show the true profit or loss on the 

 farm, in addition to the value of the labor, wear and tear of 

 implements, etc., that has been expended on the supposed 

 improvements of the farm, with the intention of letting a 

 future year prove whether such supposed improvement was 

 real or imaginary. I shotild also add that one source of profit 

 is not shown in my accounts, namely, the pleasure and health- 

 ful exercise derived from life in the country. 



Successful farming depends on so many things, with our 

 present system of farming, that its profits or losses cannot be 

 ascertained in a single year. The weather of one year may be 

 such that either the profits are made small or a loss sustained, 

 and the next year may be so successful that the case is changed, 

 and the profits be such, perchance, as to more than make up 

 for the losses of a previous year. 



It is often the case on some farms that the true profit and 

 loss is ascertained only by casting the balance from the 

 accounts of several years at once. 



Sometimes a tract of land is bought with the intention of 

 making it a residence for the owner, or with the expectation 

 that it will come into the market at a future day for house lots, 

 and it is farmed to help pay the interest and taxes on it, the 

 price paid being high, and the profits, if looked for as in the 

 latter case I mention, expected to be returned at some future 

 day. 



Thus the profit and loss account must be kept open, some- 

 times for a long period of years, until the land has been all 

 sold, to show the true profit on the investment. 



No profit can be derived from farming on poor land, and 

 hence the cause of emigration from the East to the West to 

 obtain the fertile land at small cost ; and thus we see the need 

 of scientific agriculture in the East which shall show what 

 system we must adopt to improve our unproductive lands and 

 make them capable of doing all that is possible towards sup- 

 plying our wants, and we ourselves must do all we can in this 

 way to keep at home those who have grown up and been 

 educated in the East and for whose education our citizens have 



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