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tion and improvement of seed, and the renervation of our 

 soil. And if the farmer would use his brains upon these 

 subjects, and raise twice as much wheat from half the 

 amount of seed, we should hear less growling about hard 

 times. 



A very small exercise of brains will teach any man 

 that a large, plump kernel of wheat will produce more nu- 

 triment for the support of the germ, until it can get it from 

 the earth, than it would from that of a small kernel. 



The same exercise of brain ought to teach us all that 

 thin sowing will produce more tillers and healthier growth 

 than thick sowing and crowded plants. 



This work is designed as a leader, to teach farmers 

 how to think. We have many talkers and few thinkers. 

 "Error will travel a great ways while truth is putting on 

 his boots." It is for the farmer to trace nature to her hi- 

 ding places, and wring from her the secrets on which she 

 conducts her stupendous empire." How few there are who 

 do it. If these rules could have been observed in the last 

 ten years in our institutes, the farmers might have been 

 much farther advanced, the executive committee might 

 have been saved raising the question of the lessons which 

 they have learned, which questions they 'have found them- 

 selves wholly unable to answer, the President might have 

 been saved the humility of threatening to arrest me be- 

 cause I expose their ignorance, and their brainless Secreta- 

 ry might have had something better to report than the 

 senseless jargon of words which he called ''very interest- 

 ing." 



The history of the farmer's attempt to improve his 

 wheat, has been to buy a new variety of wheat that had 

 been improved by careful cultivation, which would pro- 

 duce well for a few years, and then under the careless 

 cultivation of the ordinary fanner would run out, to be 

 succeeded by another new variety, which would share the 



