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Agriculture is the most Healthy and Honorable, as it is the most Natural and Useful pursuit of Man. 



VOL. XII. 



ROCHESTER, N. Y.— OCTOBER, 1851. 



NO. 10- 



PROFESSOR JOHNSTON AND AMERICAN AGRI- 

 CULTURE. 



The London Farmer's Magazine for August contains a com- 

 plimentary notice of a lecture by Prof. Johnston before the 

 New Castle Farmers' Club, in which we lind the following 

 remarks : " The most interesting part of the lecture is the 

 discovery of some very fine beds of phosphorite in America.'' 

 lie says : — " It occured to me that there might be parts in 

 North America where this substance could be found purer, 

 and in larger qnanlities than in England. / accordingly 

 caused inquiries to be made, especially where quantities have 

 been got. The result was that in two Slates of the Union de- 

 ir posits had been found, ic/iich though not quite pure, were 

 ■ \\ nearly so." 



From the above it appears that neither Dr. Jack- 

 son, nor Mr. Freinch of Boston, nor Dr. Emmons of 

 Albany, is entitled to the honor of discovery in find- 

 ing v^nable fertilizers in New Jersey and northern 

 New York ; but the *' inquires were caused" by 

 Professor Johnston of England, and he alone is en- 

 titled to the credit of suggesting a critical search for 

 phosphate of lime. We suspect that the claim of 

 the Diirham professor to originality in this matter is 

 no better than that of his two volumes of "Notes on 

 America" to truthfulness and intelligence. In mak- 

 ing his book, he appears to have had a clear under- 

 standing of what sort of a story would best suit the 

 English market, and wrote accordingly. Never was 

 there a caricature of this countrj^, particularly of its 

 farmers, written, which was so generally applauded 

 by all classes in Great Britain. Blackwood's Jour- 

 nal of Agriculture sneeringly remarks, in an eulo- 

 gistic notice of Prof. Johnston's " notes." "Of the 

 agriculture of America there is little to be said ; and 

 except ivarnings, nothing to be learned." Other jour- 

 nals, both literary and agricultural, praise the Eng- 

 lish professor, a»d express contempt for American 

 agriculturists. Blackwood says : " A kind of list- 

 nessness creeps over the second and third genera- 

 tions of American born, both in the British Provinces 

 and in the States." The "degeneracy" of the Eng- 

 lish, Scotch, and Irish, on emigrating to America, is 

 a popular theme just now in Great Britain. Our 

 extreme fondness for foreign goods and gew-gaws 

 of all kinds, our serviie adulation of itinerant " pro- 

 fessors," lecturers, singers, dancers, play-actors and 

 novel-writters, from Europe, naturally create the 

 impression that we are an idle, frivolous people, a 

 little soft in the head, and greatly deteriorated from 

 our progenitors in the mother country. Had Prof. 

 Emmons made his valuable agricultural researches in 

 England and gotten up two or three quarto volumes 



as he has in New York, American publishers would 

 have had the work abridged, stereotyped, and in every 

 book store in the Union. But we republicans, in- 

 stead of encouraging science and researches in our 

 own free land, allowed Mr. Emmons' excellent jo.ur- 

 nal of agriculture to die for the want of a reasonable 

 support, while a foreign lecturer on agricultural 

 chemistry was paid liberal sums in Boston, Albany, 

 and Washington, to aid him in collecting materials 

 to make American farmers the laughing-stock of 

 Europe. So long as our own citizens who labor 

 faithfully to develope the true principles of American 

 agriculture are treated in this vi^ay, our common 

 sense will be impeached by the best-informed nations. 

 We must build up a literature of our own, or be the 

 despised copyists and followers of Europeans. Mr. 

 Johnston makes the average product of wheat in the 

 State of New York 14 bushels per acre ; and that of 

 New Brunswick 18 bushels. From these figures he 

 gives the people of Great Britain to understand that 

 the farmers of the British Provinces are twenty-eight 

 per cent better cultivators of the soil than those of 

 the States. 



The Edinburgh Review for July says : "The 

 cause of the apparent deterioration of settlers re- 

 mains to be determined. Some imagine that the 

 climate is unfavorable to the developement of the 

 hardier and more pertinacious qualities of the Anglo- 

 Saxon race." These remarks and others of a kin- 

 dred character are made in a highly commendatory 

 notice of the " Notes" of our Durham lecturer. 



In his admirable work entitled " Democracy in 

 America," M. de TocquEviLLK says that the United' 

 States are governed by an aristocracy of lawyers. 

 Be this as it may, it is certain that the earnest rec- 

 commendation of President Washington to Con- 

 gress, to foster agriculture by establishing a national 

 board, has been treated with contempt for more than 

 half a century by our national legislature. P^rance 

 has her "JMinister of Agriculture," and the represen- 

 tative of the Belgian government at the court of St. 

 James is a practical farmer. In his speech at the 

 dinner of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 

 M. Van de Wever said : "It is a dangerous cir- 

 cumstance to enjoy an old established reputation for 

 superiority, if, filling men with conceit and vanity, 

 it prompts them to consider their empiric traditions 

 as superior to the most positive discoveries of mod- 

 ern science. We have in Belgium happily escaped 

 that danger, and all classes there have followed the 

 impulse given by the government. Societies and 



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