196 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



April 



yard and stable, which would otherwise be lost, are 

 the best part of the manure. 



Some time in 1854, I inquired by the way of the 

 Farmer as to the way of using muck — the editor 

 kindly answered me. I could not fully carrj' out 

 his directions, except in one case, and that was in 

 the mixture of lime, at the rate of one bushel dry 

 slaked lime to the load ; this I tried, and the result 

 was that it doubled my crop of potatoes. It was 

 put on at the rate of thirty loads to the acre. On 

 the remaining part of the same piece, manured with 

 yard manure, at the rate of twenty-five loads to the 

 acre, did not get more than half as much crop as on 

 the part manured with muck. 



Tlwtford, Ft., 1856. S. K. Berry, 



For the New England Farmer. 



CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 



BY HENRY F. FRENCH. 



An Agricultural Discussion among Legislators — Profound 

 Views of one of them— Two Ways of learning Agriculture— 

 A little Learning Is a dangerous Thing — Use of Mathematics 

 in Agriculture, Illustrated— Science is simply the Ob<rvation 

 of God, at Work— The Life Principle— Men of Education 

 needed — Experiments Frustrated. 



Three or four years ago there was a discussion 

 one evening in the hall of the House of Represen- 

 tatives at Concord, New Hampshire, at a meeting 

 called by the friends of agricultural progress, for 

 the purpose of impressing the members of the Gen- 

 eral Court, if possible, with the idea that the State 

 ought to do something in aid of the farming inter- 

 est, by way of pecuniary assistance to the agricultu- 

 ral societies, or otherwise. One would suppose that 

 this would be no difficult task, especially as the 

 constitution of the State expressly provides that — 

 "It shall be the duty of the legislators and magis- 

 trates to encourage private and public institutions, 

 rewards and immunities for the promotion of agri- 

 culture," but as the lawyers say in their bills in 

 chancery, "the contrary thereof is true." I well 

 remember the argument of one highly respectable 

 gentleman, who evidently considered it his duty to 

 make a speech against these new notions about sci- 

 entific agriculture. The fact is, said he, that there 

 is no dependence to be put upon those men who 

 . talk about scientific agriculture and agricultural 

 chemistry. They don't agree among themselves, 

 and if you undertake to follow their advice, you 

 will find no two of them to advise alike. One of 

 them will tell you to plow in all your manure 

 green, and another to compost it all before it is 

 applied ; one will tell you that you must put the 

 manure into the ground a foot deep, because the best 

 part of it rises and so escapes, while another informs 

 us that the manure sinks, and goes ofi" into the 

 ground, and so we had better leave it near the sur- 

 face. One chemist tells us there is nothing so good 

 as lime for our land, and another warns us not to 

 mix lime with our manure heaps, because it will 

 spoil the whole. And so our worthy legislator 

 proceeded to show up the absurdity of these new 

 light teachers of husbandry. 



Now this is not a very unusual style of argu- 

 ment, and it is very hard to meet. The fact is, that 

 the man was so far off from any appreciation of the 

 truth, that nobody could go far enough back to get 

 round him ! There are two ways of learning agricul- 

 ture, as there are of learning music. The one is by 

 rote, the other by understanding its principles. A 

 person may learn a particular tune, perhaps as well 

 by the former as by the latter method, but this 

 will not help him to sing or play a new sheet of 

 music. And so in husbandry. A man may see his 

 grandfather and father carry on the homestead, and 

 by treading in their footsteps, may bring about re- 

 sults as satisfactory as theirs, on the same farm with 

 the same crops. But place him on a new farm, or 

 let him undertake to raise new crops on the home- 

 stead, with no knowledge o^ principles, va\(\. nobody 

 can tell whether the product will be Yankee Doodle 

 or Old Hundred. 



There is truth in the poet's saying 



"A little learning is a dangerous thing." 



A man is much safer to be literally a know-nothing 

 in agriculture, than he is when he has got a glimpse 

 of two or three ideas, with no sufficient knowledge 

 to guide him in their application. Many men have 

 a strong propensity to mathematical reasoning — 

 to work out their propositions by the single rule of 

 three direct. Thus, if a half-ounce of guano to the 

 hill, will add twenty bushels of corn to the acre to 

 my crop, how much will a quarter of a pound to 

 the hill add to it ? 



Now the corn and the arithmetic will not be 

 likely to come out, exactly alike ; indeed, the com, 

 probably, will never come out, at all. 



The farmer, who tried salt as a manure for pota- 

 toes, by putting half a pint in a hill, was probably 

 disgusted with scientific farming forever. Had he 

 put the same quantity into his soup for dinner, he 

 would have had a parallel case. 



We, in New England, need education in the 

 Principles of Agriculture, to do our work properly. 

 On the new and fertile soil of the West, only brute 

 force is requisite to produce a crop. Cut off" the 

 timber and burn it, or break up the prairie sod and 

 put in the seed, and the crop will come. But, the 

 skinning process has been finished here, and we can 

 get from the earth only what we first give it, or 

 induce the elements to render up to its use. The 

 temper of our good mother Earth is worn out, 

 and she will no longer deal with u=< on terms, which 

 place "the reciprocity all on one side." 



We can no longer have our music by turning 

 the crank of a hand-organ, but we must learn skil- 

 fully to touch the keys, or we shall reap only dis- 

 cords. The philosopher in the story, who beheved 

 that all things came by chance, and sought to make 

 for himself a wife by mixing all the elements which 

 enter into the composition of a human body, and 



