No. 6. Christmas Gift to the young Agriculturists of the U. S. 



197 



A Christmas Gift to the young Agricultu- 

 rists of the United States. 



By John S. Skinner. Published by order of the Board 

 of Control of the U. S. Ag. Society. 



My object is not to propose to you the tantalizing 

 pursuit of any new asricultiiral humbug, or to recom- 

 mend any new-fangled machine or process for the culti- 

 vation of old staple crops; it is rather to urge you to 

 reflect on the intellectual condition and habits of Ame- 

 rican agriculturists as a class, and to consider how 

 much and how justly your moral and political influ- 

 ence, as well as the actual proceeds of your labour, 

 would be augmented, and more uniformity in prices be 

 obtained, by an association to promote a more thorough 

 and systematic investigation and study of subjects and 

 sciences belonging or closely allied to your immediate 

 pursuits. 



Can it be that you imagine that, because you have 

 not been regularly trained to a civil or military profes- 

 sion, you may therefore, without loss or disparagement, 

 leave your mind to stagnate, like some irreclaimable 

 morass, producing nought but rank and noxious weeds ; 

 yourselves distinguished, if at all, like the famed inha- 

 bitants of Boeotia, for great physical strength and de- 

 velopment, but without any of the spirit of chivalry, 

 or the arts and graces of science and civilization 1 Far 

 be from citizens of a free Republic, and especially from 

 tillers of American soil, such ignoble apathy. Look 

 around at all other vocations, whether their pursuit be 

 upon the land, or their home uj)on the deep! All have 

 formed associations for general improvement. 



The hardy mariner, boasting any pretensions to ac- 

 complishment in the line of his pursuit, having finished 

 the usual course of mathematics and navigation, with 

 well-stored libraries at his command, delights to beguile 

 his long winter nights and tedious calms at sea, in 

 reading the history and noting the productions of the 

 various countries he visits, and the lives and actions of 

 navigators and warriors, who have distinguished them- 

 selves on his favourite element. In constant exercise, 

 amasing or severe, his mind is kept free from the rust 

 of sloth, and the debility of inaction. 



The soldier, at some military institution, maintained 

 fbr his instruction by a general charge on the commu- 

 nity, being early imbued with elementary knowledge 

 of drawing, gunnery, strategy, fortifications, and all 

 the death-dealing inventions contributory to the art of 

 attack and defence ; acquires and carries with him 

 through life a habit of study, and a fondness for mili- 

 tary memoirs and biograjihies, and works on the sci- 

 ence of manslaughter, for which, unfortunately, the 

 rapacity and injustice of mankind, and the wars they 

 produce, have in all ages supplied but too many mate- 

 rials. Alas! to lend enchantment to this species of 

 readins. there needs not the stimulus of self-interest or 

 the habits of military life ; there seems to be in our na- 

 ture something essentially sanguinary ; hence the nur- 

 sery fictions of " Raw-head and Bloody-bones," and 

 " Jack the Giant-killer," are listened to by children — 



" Each trembling heart with grateful terror quelled," 



just as, at three score and ten. men read with intense 

 avidity the bloody realities of the battle field. Who, 

 by the way, is not sometimes forced to distrust the firm- 

 ness of his republican creed, when he confesses how, 

 like the rest of mankind, he is apt to be captivated by 

 the glare of great military achievements ? 



The physician, too, will tell you that he sees no end 

 to the road of inquiry and observation which lies be- 

 fore him. Botany, chemistry, the natural history of 

 man and of inferior animals, their physiology, diseases 

 and remedies, present to him so many fields for research, 

 no less useful than entertaining, while medical reposi- 

 tories and more elaborate works, without number, 

 serve at once to illustrate the never-ending discoveries 

 of the active practitioner, and to stimulate and feed 

 the voracious curiosity of the ambitious student. In 

 numerous colleges, again— incorporated and liberally 

 endowed for his in.struction— -he gathers the fruit of 

 ages of practical experiment and scientific deduction. 

 Thore stands the skilful surgeon, with his knife and 

 nerve of iron, to rip up and lay bare the very fountains 

 of life and of thought ; and at his side the chemist, 

 with his crucible, to extract medicine from the rudest 

 mineral, or, in the simplest plant that grows upon your 

 wayside, to detect " poison more deadly than the mad- 



dog's tooth." Put into his hands the e.xquisitely deli- 

 cate and beautiful poppy, and he will quickly draw 

 from its stem a charm that can assuage or put an end 

 to the bitterest agonies of the body or the mind ! 



The lawyer, again, after reaping all the advantages 

 of established and well-endowed law schools, is forced 

 to keep pace, whether he will or not, with the volumi- 

 nous decisions of the courts, and the ever-varying en- 

 actments of the Legislature. To these he generally 

 adds some knowledge of the sciences, and close fami- 

 liarity with classical literature and the lighter contri- 

 butions of an ever-teeming press. From these sourcea 

 the late Mr. Pinkney, whose ambition of intellectual 

 renown no measure of glory could satiate, was wont to 

 derive his wonderful powers of illilstration as well as 

 the choicest flowers of his oratory. His very last mo- 

 ments, accelerated by an extraordinary exertion of the 

 reasoning faculty in a case of great importance, were 

 beguiled by a new and charming fiction from the pea 

 of the Great Unknown. Thus did reason and imagi- 

 nation alternately sway and beguile the mind of that 

 great advocate, and lend effulgence to the last moments 

 of his brilliant career, as clouds are gilded by the raya 

 of the setting sun. 



The merchant, he whom the farmer supposes to con- 

 fine his reading to prices-current and his pen to book- 

 keeping—even he, too, is seen of late years forming 

 " mercantile library associations," to provide a collection 

 of authors, and a succession of learned lectures onmer« 

 cantile law, the currency of different nations, and on 

 all the arts and productions which furnish for commerce 

 its materials, its security, and its profits. While too 

 many young agriculturists are wasting their leisure 

 hours in idle amusements, or dozing them away in list- 

 less vacuity, the merchant is studying, among the 

 wants and the fabrics of foreign countries, where he 

 can find the best market for all the products of Ameri- 

 can agriculture, and where he can buy on the best 

 terms all those articles which he well knows the planter 

 and farmer must have in exchange for the fruits of hi3 

 own labour. But let me not wander from my leading 

 object, which is to hold up to agriculturists the exam- 

 ples of the followers of other pursuits, and in pointing, 

 among all of them, to the organization of societies and 

 of extensive libraries for the diffusion of knowledge, in- 

 cite American husbandmen to reflect seriously if it does 

 not behoove them to go and do so likewise. Not only is 

 it to be feared that there is a lamentable absence of all 

 regular association of mind and of means, for prose- 

 cuting the inquiries and promulgating the discoveries 

 and improvements of which agriculture is susceptible, 

 but that even the codes and journals dedicated to their 

 particular use and instruction, are not in the hands of 

 the rising generation of husbandmen. How many 

 have read even the Farmers' series of those excellent 

 works published in England by the society for the dif- 

 fusion of useful knowledge, telling, as they do, all 

 about horses, cattle, sheep, grains, grasses, implements, 

 buildings, &c. ? Even Rutfin's great work on calcare- 

 ous manures, meanly pirated by English writers, is not 

 to be found, as it should be, in every farmer's library, 

 with Sinclair's Code of Agriculture, the American 

 Farmer, the New England Farmer, the Farmer's Regis- 

 ter, the Cultivator, the Farmers' Cabinet, the Silk Jour- 

 nal, and many others of which no agriculturist shoiild 

 be ignorant, any more than an officer should plead ig- 

 norance of the army regulations. 



There may be some whose lip will curl with a con- 

 temptuous smile at the very suggestion of any value or 

 pleasure in book-learning for a farmer or planter, whose 

 business is a field ! How much to be pitied is the in- 

 sensibility of such men to the most copious and lasting 

 springs of enjoyment,— the pleasure which every man 

 experiences in the very process of intellectual accre- 

 tion ! 



Let those who would deride or undervalue the labours 

 of agricultural writers tell, if they can, what American 

 husbandry has derived from the experience and reflec- 

 tions of Taylor, as set forth in the practical essays of 

 Arator, and from the more analytical and scientific in- 

 vestigations of Ruffin in the south— and from such men 

 as Lowel and Colman and Buel in the north. Be as- 

 sured, tillers of the soil, there is no occupation which 

 opens a wider sphere for, or admits of more benefit 

 from, scientific investigation and their recorded results, 

 than yours. With our United States society, and all 

 its instruments and facilities properly organized and 

 arranged, as a leading branch of the great " National 



