16 AMERICAN MANURES. 



only myths, the bugbear of those parties who 

 make a business of giving information, and 

 writing books on subjects of which they are 

 entirely ignorant; and the thin veil of whose 

 pretensions is so transparent that the farmer 

 soon discovers the emptiness that is within, and 

 those writers get the contempt and derision 

 they so deservedly merit. 



Farming should and can be elevated to a 

 science; but in order to effect this, the farmer 

 should realize that he has more to learn than 

 the building of fences, ploughing aud cultivating 

 the soil, sowing the seed and gathering the 

 harvest, with the general care of his live stock. 

 That the necessary knowledge for the per- 

 formance of these things can be transmitted 

 orally, from father to son, without the aid of 

 books, we will admit. But if this w r as all that 

 was necessary to be known, farming would be 

 degraded to mere labor and manual dexterity, 

 not requiring as much skill and intelligence as 

 is exhibited by some of the lower animals in 

 providing for their wants. Traditional know- 

 ledge is not progressive. It is only when one 

 generation preserves the knowledge they have 

 acquired in the form of written books, that the 

 next generation are enabled to extend that 

 knowledge, and improve the arts or sciences to 

 which they are clevoted. If we do not know 



