ESSAY ON AGRICULTURAL LIBRARIES. 109 



Objections may doubtless be raised to the establisliing of such libra- 

 ries as are here contemplated. Some of them have been glanced at, 

 and attempted to be answered, in the preceding pages. There are 

 but two others that occur to mc as having any great weight. And 

 first it may Be said that such libraries, if designed to instruct young 

 farmers, will entirely fail of their object ; that agriculture, being a 

 practical art, rmst be learned by actual practice ; and, to learn it 

 well, books can never be substituted in the place of personal obser- 

 vation and experience. The truth of this latter opinion is fully ad- 

 mitted ; bat it may well be questioned, whether as guides in under- 

 standing the various objects and operations of agriculture, books may 

 not afford to beginners the most valuable assistance. "Books on 

 farming," says Stephens in his Book of the Farm, "to be really ser- 

 viceable to the learner, ought not to constitute the arena on which to 

 study farming — the field being the best place for perceiving the fit- 

 ness of labor, to the purposes it is designed to attain — but as moni- 

 tors for indicating the best modes of management, and showing the 

 way of learning those modes most easily. By these, the practice of 

 experienced farmers might be communicated and recommended to 

 beginners. By consulting those which had been purposely written 

 for their guidance, while they themselves were carefully observing the 

 operations of the farm, the iuiport of labors — wliich are often intri- 

 cate, always protracted over considerable portions of time, and 

 necessarily separated from each other — would be acquired in a short- 

 er time, than if left to be discovered by the sagacity of beginners." 



It may also be said in answer to this objection, that those who con- 

 sult agricultural books, while their minds are plastic and their habits 

 forming, will be far more likely to improve upon the practice of their 

 fathers, than if they only followed them in their routine of husban- 

 dry. It is well known with what facility a young man adopts as the 

 best, tlie modes of farming that are practised on the homestead, and 

 •with what pertinacity he adheres to them in all after life. H once it 

 is that farmers, as a clajs, are so slow not merely to make innova- 

 tions, but to adopt real improvements. The fault is not that they 

 follow the ways of their fathers, but that they follow them blindfold, 

 and with a sort of undeviating exactness, amounting to veneration. 

 To the youth who is ambitious to attempt nothing beyond what his 

 progenitors have accomplished the old care-ruts worn by them through 

 long ireaeratiaus, are vastlv safe and convenient to travel in. But it 



