534 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



more than pays all the expenses of the operation in one year, and leaves that 

 very spot the most productive piece of land he has, in all time to come. 



Such is what is being done for Agriculture by the harmonious " aid and com- 

 fort " that the scientific and the practical men are rendering to each other all 

 over England and Scotland, under the spur of the most urgent necessity and by 

 the force of immense capital ; and, patrons of The Farmers' Library, the results 

 of all this, which costs so much in England, and for detailed statements of some 

 of which, in Prize Essays, hundreds of dollars are given — these results and these 

 Essays we get by every steamer from England and France, and spread them all 

 out before you for less than half a cent a page : one glass of poisonous alcohol, 

 for which you pay 61 cents at the least, would pay for one of these Prize Essays, 

 written by the first men living, in the various departments of Agricultural Sci* 

 ence, machinery and mechanics, and paid for at the rate of from ten to sixty 

 guineas — $50 to $300 — under the award of the ablest and most practical men to 

 be found in England. And yet there are those who would tell you that such 

 knowledge is of no account, because, forsooth, there is, between England and 

 some part of the United States, a difference of climate ! — as if it took some 

 privileged character, some wise man in his own conceit, to find that out. 



Well, on this subject of climate, why do not Agricultural Societies offer pre- 

 miums in the different States, to those who will keep and supply the most exact 

 registers of meteorological observations — fall of rain and range of heat ? Just 

 because it would be going out of the common track — because they won't take 

 the trouble of thinking, but content themselves with offering premiums for crops 

 on perches of land, and great masses of fat on a frame of bones ! Do not these 

 Societies know the benefit which Agriculture might derive from a series of such 

 observations in all the States ? What are our Agricultural Committees of Legis- 

 lative bodies about, that they don't take measures to secure such information for 

 the use of the Farmer ? Don't they know that the Government is spending hun- 

 dreds of dollars to have such things done — exactly such — as connected with the 

 Army — with War — those for which you, agriculturists, are taxed more than 80 

 per cent, of all you pay for the support of Government ? Do you know that the 

 People of the United States — the planters and farmers employed in the peaceful 

 and civilizing pursuits of Agriculture — pay for our military establishments — 

 Army and Navy — a larger profortion of the whole expenses of Government, than 

 is paid for like purposes by any other people under the sun, unless it be, possibly, 

 the serf-people of Russia, thousands of whom are bought, like cattle and sheep, 

 alono- with the land ! And for tame submission to such a vile prostitution of the 

 ends of Government, and of taxes drawn from the products of your industry, do 

 you not deserve the same fate ? And, after all, until you dare complain, your 

 Government will not, for agricultural uses, buy a thermometer, or set up a rain- 

 gauge, or analyze a stalk of corn, or a pod of cotton, to save you from perdition, 

 unless it were to see how far it might be made to take, cheaply, the place of 

 gunpoivder ! Nor will your Representatives ever demand it to be done, as long 

 as you have not the spirit to resist such iniquitous extortion. Eighty per cent. 

 of all expenses for Army and Navy, ships and forts ! It is impossible that a ra- 

 tional people can submit to it, situated as we are, unless it be that Almiglrty 

 God, for some inscrutable purpose, has doomed them to be slaves— Qwe/n Deus 

 vult perdere prius dementat. Measures of Government provide for taking me- 

 teorological observations at all military posts, and on these the patriotic and 

 philosophical inquirer must rely ; but these are kept exclusively, as are such 



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