THE SOIL OF NEW ENGLAND. 33 



society, relaxation, should be mixed up with his physical toils. 

 He has intellect, heart, imagination, taste, as well as bones and 

 muscles, and he is grievously wronged when compelled to exclu- 

 sive drudgery for bodily subsistence." We have had too much 

 art and too little science. Farming has been too empirical. 

 We have been guided by a sort of independent empiricism, 

 rather than by enlightened- science. Not that a well instituted 

 experiment for deciding any particular point should be disjjar- 

 aged, but life should not be all experiment. Too many of our 

 farmers toward the close of life, look back upon their earlier 

 efforts as having been guided by a policy essentially bad. "Time 

 and capital," says Liebig, " are wasted in experiments." A few 

 successful results, cannot establish a reliable rule. We have 

 decried the long experience of scientific men, called it " book 

 knowledge," " impractical," forgetting that these very theories 

 are the result of practice, and that our own practice has a 

 theory to it. 



The mechanic, receiving "the data and formulae of forces and 

 agencies as true, works straight forward to a result, the truth 

 of which he does not doubt. The farmer, though the laws 

 governing the growth of a blade of corn, more impenetrable 

 perhaps, but not more unreal, are as old as the world, is slower to 

 receive them — the laws of motion Are no more certain and fixed 

 than those of chemical affinities ; the binomial theorei\i no more 

 a fixed fact, than that gypsum (svilphate of lime) when sown 

 upon land, will react upon the ammonia in the air. Therefore, 

 agriculture, which supports all, has been slow to take its stand 

 among the sciences. 



Boys, deeming agriculture the lowest of arts, the meanest of 

 vocations, have sought the professions ; the ministry, but have 

 been forced to turn to the woods and fields for their noblest, 

 sublimest lessons ; the study of medicine, but in their study of 

 chemistry, have come to find themselves better farmers than 

 ever, and discover that a better remedy than any in the whole 

 pharmacopeia, is the healthful exercise which out-door labor 

 gives. 



It is a pity that the beauties of farming should be better seen 

 from other stand-points, than the one the farmer himself occu- 

 pies ; that they who are shut up inside four walls of city brick, 

 should know more of chemistry, botany, mineralogy, cnto- 



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