IO INTRODUCTION. 



scientifically, enable the farmer to accumulate wealth, and 

 enjoy all the comforts and luxuries of refined life. Every 

 community could be made up of the best society, every 

 family could have its fine library and its accomplished sons 

 and daughters: farmers' sons need not leave the favorite 

 pursuit of their fathers, and go into the learned professions, 

 from the erroneous conclusion that they were more honorable 

 or profitable. Farmers' daughters need not despise the 

 delightful and healthful employments of the dairy, the 

 kitchen, or the loom, and seek elevation in the miserable 

 pursuits and fashions of the city. 



Nothing conduces more to the elevation and refinement of 

 the mind than the study of nature ; the man who holds fre- 

 quent communion with nature, and studies and obeys her 

 laws, is always made a better and happier man. 



The more we explore the mysteries of nature, the more are 

 we humbled with the reflection, that to our finite view, only a 

 small part of her works are comprehensible. And when, after 

 years of patient toil, we fancy we have learned most of her 

 laws, we still find the great Author has only opened to our 

 view new vistas to more extensive and unexplored fields of 

 knowledge. 



" Nature is always perfect and unvarying, but man's 

 knowledge is progressive ; consequently in every advance he 

 arrives nearer the truth, yet as far from knowing all nature 

 and her laws as he is from infinity. Exact knowledge consists 

 in those things which can be seen and demonstrated, while 

 in all knowledge of inference there is progression. Opinions, 

 which are often the result of imperfect knowledge, are liable 

 to change, and the mind is never advanced by adopting the 

 opinions of others; for by that means man is never made a 

 thinking being, but rests upon authority In all sciences, the 

 acquisition of new truths exhibits in a new light, the beautiful 

 and harmonious operation of the laws of nature." 



