FARMS. 125 



of animals, the genus Bos came in its natural order; but will 

 he inform us how to tell a good cow from a bad one ? We 

 would not underrate science ; neither would we overrate it. 

 We are confident no farmer of Essex county will think lightly 

 of intelligence and education when he remembers that Pickering 

 and Colman belong to their number, and have left behind them 

 their teachings and example. No farmer of Massachusetts will 

 disparage the benefits of careful education to an agricultural 

 community, when we have intrusted for years, the interests of 

 this great branch of industry to the care of our Lowells, our 

 Warrens, our Everetts, our Quincys, our Winthrops, names 

 which have given a distinction to Massachusetts agriculture, 

 compared with which the annual ploughing of Chinese empe- 

 rors for thousands of centuries, even before the days of Moses, 

 is a mere farce. 



But there is an amount of practical knowledge based on the 

 experience of hard working, successful, practical farmers, with- 

 out which all the theory in the world is but a glittering show. 

 An intelligent farmer walks through your field of onions, and 

 lie tells you how you can gather your crop, so that all the '- bull 

 necks" in the field may be made to swell out into fair and mar- 

 ketable proportions. Did he learn this from theory, or from his 

 own sunburnt experience ? You have a field which you wish 

 to lay down to grass, and are in doubt whether to sow rye, barley 

 or oats, or neither with your seed; it is your experienced neigh- 

 bor whose land lies next to yours, and who is subjected to the 

 same influences, who can give you the advice you need. A 

 cunning gardener discovers that bone manure will bring his 

 fruit trees into thrifty bearing, and science says it is all due to 

 the phosphates. But who did the business, science or the gar- 

 dener? It is the collection of facts, after all, which must to a 

 great degree constitute the great bulk of useful agricultural 

 literature. It is actual experience which is to tell us how we can 

 reclaim the moss-grown pastures and drain the cold wet meadows 

 of Essex county most economically and profitably. It is expe- 

 rience which teaches the best modes of applying manures, of 

 feeding cattle, of carrying on the detail of the farm ; and it is 

 experience which we would obtain in our examination of the 

 farms of this county. That which is learned from the soil has 

 a practical application which gives it a substantial importance. 



