110 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



and judicious treatment, thorough tillage, and a rational rotation of crops to en- 

 able it in future to take care of itself, and maintain its own productiveness. 



The Montgomery County improvements, of which Mr. Stabler's may be taken 

 as a favorable specimen, illustrate the case of sagacious neighboring farmers- 

 beginning with poor farms and no money, at a time when the roads that lead to 

 success had not been so well explored ; striking and depending in a great meas- 

 ure on their own lights, yet with constant vigilance detecting errors, and, af- 

 ter many years of new and doubtful experiments and toilsome progress, reaching 

 the goal of their noble ambition, and planting beacons along their track for the 

 benefit of those who might follow in their wake ! Can any measure, it may be 

 asked, of honor or gratitude, be too full for those who thus serve the truest and 

 greatest Interest of their country, if agriculturists only had the discernment to dis- 

 tinguish, in merit, " the true from the sharn " ! — In the other case. Col. Capron, 

 possessed of all the lights reflected on the great art of Agriculture, by modern ex- 

 periment and discovery, and all the means necessary to the most successful prac- 

 tice, with equal judgm.ent and vigor, exemplifies, to the conviction of the most 

 skeptical, the truth of the principles and the soundness of the system established 

 by the laborious and costly experience of the men of Montgomery — who, with 

 many others, have so efficiently assisted, for the last thirty years, in taking the 

 sounding and laying down the chart for agricultural improvers. 



But diflerent as are the two cases, both have their exceeding merit and useful- 

 ness, in their way ; wliile each addresses itself to very different classes — friend 

 Stabler's to the thousands of American cultivators in circumstances more or less 

 straitened, who need the encouraging influence of such examples to save them 

 from despair — Col. Capron's speaks to the opulent and incredulous stock-jobber 

 and money-changer, who worships the " almighty dollar," and who cannot be 

 persuaded, but by such knock-him-down arguments as the Colonel's, that dollars 

 can be plowed or dug out of the ground. If, then, his success should have the 

 effect of turning to the country and to its noble and useful pursuits the minds 

 and the means of wealthy drones, who are lounging away their unconsequential 

 Jives in the towns, dreaming only of sensual enjoyments and sordid accumulation 

 — if it should, as it ought, have the effect of demonstrating to those men of over- 

 grown fortunes bought with a wedding-ring, that their sons might find honor, 

 and entertainment, ay, and "profit — which many rich men like so much better — in 

 practical Agriculture ; should he thus turn to the country that current of capital 

 and enterprise and labor which, under the influence of partial legislation, sets in 

 all quarters away from the land into towns and manufactories, he will entitle 

 himself to stand even yet higher than he docs among the friends of the Plow. 



After all, what the landed interest needs is, first, an earnest exercise of the 

 mind, to understand the principles, practical and political, on which its success- 

 and prosperity depend, and then the command of capital, which is as much 

 needed for the profitable manufactttre of wheat, and oats, and corn, and tobacco,, 

 and cotton, and sugar, and rice, by the materials, power and machinery em- 

 ployed in their production, as it is to marmfacture cloth and paper out of wool 

 and rags. The published results of Col. Capron's experiments seem indeed em- 

 phatically to say thus to the capitalist of the City : " You, Sir, want respectable 

 occupations for your sons, and the land needs the use of your surplus wealth. A 

 farm, enough for your purpose, may be had almost for the asking. There it lies, 

 like the hull and masts of a noble ship, at your wharf, already made to your 

 hands ; she requires only money to buy the sails and rigging, and to stow her 



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