484 AGRICULTURE. 



Farmers who have gone before you for thousands of years 

 have learned a good deal, and what they have learned has 

 been written and printed. Other farmers are trying experi- 

 ments, as valuable for you as for them. Men in other walks of 

 life have applied their knowledge to finding out how plants 

 grow, and what influence is exerted upon them by soils and 

 manures. Their discoveries have been published, and many of 

 them have been approved by practice on farms. Altogether, 

 this constitutes more knowledge about the operations of the 

 farm than you could gain by experience if you lived ten lives, 

 and spent every day of all of them in the most energetic work 

 on your farm ; more than you could think out for yourself, if 

 you were to keep up a steady thinking until doomsday ; and it 

 is, very much of it, knowledge which you, as a farmer, need to 

 have, just as much as a doctor needs to know what others have 

 learned of medicine. The best use you can make of a portion 

 of your money is to spend it for agricultural books and papers ; 

 and the best use you can make of your leisure time is to spend 

 a fair share of it in reading them. Let your neighbors call you 

 a book farmer, if they will, and let them decry theories ; you 

 will work none the less faithfully for anything learned out of 

 agricultural books, and, in the end, you will find that a ton of 

 hay will cost no more because you know something of the prin- 

 ciples of haymaking, and of the laws which operate in the 

 growth of grass. The condition of your farm ten years hence 

 will be a sufficient answer to those who have ridiculed the habit 

 of reading about farming. Still, you should read with great 

 caution and with judgment. There is a great deal in agricul- 

 tural books, and still more in agricultural papers, which is crude 

 and fanciful, and which cannot be successfully applied in prac- 

 tice. Read faithfully, making use of what is read with great 

 care, and avoid trying, at least on a large scale, anything which 

 is not actually proven to be suited to your case. 



The first out-of-doors operation should be to make a map of 

 cleared land, with division fences and the location of the build- 

 ings. This map need not be very accurate. What is necessary 

 is to have something that will serve as a reminder, when study- 

 ing over future operations in the house, in bad weather. It will 

 cost very little to have a surveyor make a diagram of your boun- 



