ESSAY ON FARM ACCOUNTS, &C. 181 



land. "Experience," says Loudon, "shows that men situat- 

 ed like small farmers, (who are their own masters,) are very 

 apt to contaact habits of irregularity, procrastination and indo- 

 lence. They persuade themselves that a thing may as well 

 be done to-morrow as to-day, and the result is, that the thing 

 is not done till it is too late, and then hastily and imperfectly. 

 Now nothing can be conceived better adapted to check this 

 disposition, than a determination to keep regular accounts, and 

 a diary. The very consciousness that a man has to make en- 

 tries in his books of every thing that he does, keeps his atten- 

 tion alive to what he is to do ; and the act of making those 

 entries, is the best possible training to produce active and 

 pains-taking habits." Should a society offer premiums for the 

 best-kept Diaries, it would be well to make a class of those 

 kept by boys and girls under fifteen years of age. The youth 

 reared on the farms of New England, cannot have more profit- 

 able evening employment, as it not only tasks their mental ca- 

 pabilities, but fosters an attachment to their parental acres, and 

 demonstrates the profit of well directed agricultural labor. 



To the student of political economy, or of history, as well as 

 of agriculture, a volume of Diaries kept at the same time, in 

 different sections of a county, could not be destitute of value 

 the next year — in a century it would be invaluable, for agri- 

 cultural information is always read with interest. What farm- 

 er has not wished for more precise accounts of Noah's vine- 

 yards, and of Solomon's orchards, which " bore all kinds of 

 fruit," — of the cattle of Uzziah, who "loved husbandry," and 

 of the operations of Elisha, who was found " ploughing with 

 twelve yoke of oxen." We read in the Journal of the Pil- 

 grims, among the interesting events which occurred in March, 

 1620, that ; "Monday and Tuesday proved fayre days, so we 

 digged our grounds, and sowed our garden seeds," — a matter 

 of no marvellous importance in itself, but worthy of remem- 

 brance as the commencement of those beautiful gardens which 

 now adorn New England. 



Let us then have in the library of every Agricultural Socie- 

 ty, (in manuscript, if not in print,) Agricultural Registers, 

 compiled from the daily notings of practical farmers. They 



