Vol 6. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



39 



reconcile these conflicting opinions, nor decide which 

 should be entertained. If the first be correct, how 

 much valuable food is annually lost, and how impor- 

 tant that we, as farmers, be immediately set right; but 

 if, en the other hand, the substance is useless, or posi* 

 tively injurious, how important still that we have 

 wisdom on the subject, and not abuse the creatures 

 committed to our care. 



In the early part of last summer, I had as a tra- 

 veling companion, for a day or two, a gentleman 

 from Ohio, of apparently much intelligence and ex- 

 perience as a feeder, particularly of horses ; and, in 

 talldng upon this subject, he said that he had fed cob 

 meal until he had become satisfied that, to a horse in 

 health it was decidedly injurious — to use his own ex- 

 pression, it made their hair stand the other way. 

 He thought the cob possessed of a medicinal qual- 

 ity, which in certain cases might be useful. A 

 neighbor of mine, last fall, carried to one of the city 

 mills, and got ground, a quantity of ears of corn, in 

 all ten bushels, which he fed to a cow designed for 

 his family beef. He w^as well satisfied with the re- 

 sult, and thought it a matter of much economy. He 

 paid 4 cents per bushel for grinding — 40 cents, the 

 price of a bushel of corn. So we sec it costs just 

 as much to grind a bushel of cobs as it does to grind 

 a bushel of corn. Now, if it is economy to carry 

 cobs to a mill, and pay 4 cents per bushel to have 

 them ground, (and it certainly is, if the first of the 

 above theories is correct,) — if they are valuable in 

 one state, and not in another— or if they are good 

 for cattle, while they are injurious to horses — in 

 short, Avhatever truth is in the case, I for one shall 

 be glad to have it plainly shown ; and I shall keep 

 my eye upon the channel, and seize with avidity up- 

 on any thing that reflects upon the point at issue. 

 Yours, kc. PENFIELD. 



Jan. 20, 1845, 



(C^ Some remarks on the above will be given in 

 our April number. 



A PLEA FOR BOOK FARMING. 



Mr. Editor, — Strange as it may seem, when the 

 nubeliever seeks for arguments to disprove the truths 

 of our blessed religion, he neither goes to the Pagan 

 iTiythology,to the monstrousHindoo superstitions,nor 

 to the gross and self-indulgent code of morals incul- 

 cated by the Arabian prophet ; but he is invariably 

 driven to the lame alternative of judging Christian- 

 ity by those very institutions and morals which 

 Christianity itself has set up — thus unconsciously 

 setting his own seal to the very truths which he, 

 in his proud self-blindness, attempts to refute. So 

 with the ecofler at Book Fanning. How often does 

 the poor bMnd, bookless farmer, insist that there can 

 be no improvement on his mode of manuring and 

 culture. Ask him how he manures his fields, and 

 he will unconsciously betray the fact, that he pur- 

 sues those very improvements which that prince of 

 agricultural science, the great Tull, labored half his 

 life to bring to the conception of the dull prejudiced 

 mind of the English farmer. Until TuU's day, 1740, 

 it was the practice of the farmer to take ancient 

 customs as an infallible rule of practice — nothing 

 was investigated, nothing was improved ! The age 

 of human progress had indeed commenced, but as 

 yet it had shod little light on agricultural science. 

 Such is the isolated life of the farmer, that he is ge- 

 nerally the last in the social circle to be benefited 

 by the progress of light and knowledge. I have of- 

 ten thought, when conversing with a farmer, tiiat 



his prejudices were the more obdurate and unyield- 

 ing from the lack of that daily collision with his fel- 

 lows, without which the mind of man is continually 

 prone to a narrow-minded, hopeless egotism. 



In less than ten years after Tull had forced upon 

 the mind of the English farmer the idea of theoret- 

 ical agriculture, Mr. Bakeweil commenced those ex- 

 periments upon breeding, based upon natural prin- 

 ciples, and a patient observation of the nature and 

 physical organization of the animals he wished to 

 improve ; thus, the sheep which he introduced, and 

 others have since improved, are capable of being fat- 

 ted at about half the age required by the old, stunted 

 breed. The same improvements have been made in 

 swine, and other farm stock, until even in our own 

 land we have hardly a farmer, however besotted his 

 prejudices against agricultural progress, who has 

 not inadvertently mixed the blood of his long-nosed, 

 land-pike breed of hogs with that of the more 

 comely improved animal : like the old schoolmaster 

 in Guy Mannering, whose obdurate habits v/ould 

 not permit him to exchange his old, greasy, thread- 

 bare suit for a better, until it was abstracted from 

 his bed-side at night, when he unconsciously donned 

 the new suit left in its place ! 



Hov/ it strikes at my life when I hear a farmer 

 complain of his hard condition — the deterioration of 

 his crops — the high price of labor — the low price of 

 his produce, &c., kc. The effect upon the minds of 

 his growing children is most disastrous ; so far from 

 teaching them to like and to learn that which cannot 

 fail to improve and exalt his noble calling, it only 

 leads them into the most fatal en-ors in relation to 

 that which constituted both the pecuniary success 

 and the true independence and respectability of life ? 

 When I see a boy, fresh from tho farm, fatally in- 

 stalled into a law olfice, I cannot but reflect upon 

 what Junius has said about the soul-destroying in- 

 fluence incidental to the legal profession. When I 

 see him behind the counter of a village store, I can 

 only apply to him the soliloquy of Cardinal Wolsey: 



This is tho end of all thy greatness ! 



Here falsehood and meanness have a precocious be- 

 ginning, even before the end of adolescence ; as his 

 manhood develops, so does his knowledge of the 

 tricks of trade. Like the ill-fated, demoralized, and 

 demoralizing gambler, who has converted his wealth 

 to mischief ; so does this farmer's son go down to 

 the grave, a bankrupt in mind, reputation, and es- 

 tate : without the proud satisfaction of having made 

 one blade of grass grow, or of leaving behind him a 

 single, solitary example of true, exalted morality, for 

 the benefit of his race ! 



Let me, then, admonish the farmer to beware how 

 he belittles his own calling to the ears of his sons 

 and daughters. Let him give them the best educa- 

 tion in his power, both physical, moral, and religious. 

 In no instance may he utter in their presence the 

 vulgar, exploded notion, that hook learning is only 

 necessary to the professional man. If his own 

 tastes are unhappily perverted, by his early defective 

 education — if he " cannot teach and will not learn," 

 let him, then, reflect the more on the responsibility 

 he incurred when he became a father, and the duty 

 he now owes to his own ofispring. If he does not 

 himself know, and cannot or will not comprehend, 

 how one acre of arable land may be made to produce, 

 with a little more expense, twice or even thrice the 

 usual crop — if, by growing a green crop instead of 

 exposing his fallow land to the rays of an American 

 sun, his'^soil inspires, instead of expiring, carbon and 



