INTELLECT IN FARMING. 6T 



is no questioning the proposition, that nowhere on the face of 

 the earth are the rural population so intelligent, so well housed, 

 clad and fed, and so elevated in character, as in our blessed 

 New England. Scotland is our only rival for home comforts, 

 general intellectual culture, and high standard of morality 

 among her farming community. Were I not a New England 

 Yankee, I would like to be a Scotchman ; but I am glad that I 

 am a New Englander. 



While we honestly concede this high relative position to the 

 farmers of the Eastern States, we must at the same time express 

 our equally honest conviction that there is still much room for 

 improvement both in farm management and mental and moral 

 culture. As we ride from Dan to Beersheba through New Eng- 

 land (which interpreted into our vernacular means from Berk- 

 shire to Barnstable,) the commodious, well-painted houses, 

 surrounded by tidy lawns and shade trees, the spacious barns 

 and well-cultivated fields, the cattle grazing on our thousand 

 hills, leave the general impression of thrift, intelligence and 

 comfort; but interspersed with these comfortable homes and 

 productive farms we still find many shabby-looking dwellings, 

 with little evidence of taste in their surroundings, the barns 

 and fences dilapidated, and the fields overgrown with alders 

 and hard-hacks. What makes the difference ? The houses 

 are not to blame for their brown and rotten clapboards, neither 

 are the barns responsible for their leaky roofs and fallen under- 

 pinning, nor the meadows and pastures for being covered with 

 weeds and bushes. The houses, barns and farms do the best 

 they can under the circumstances. They would much prefer 

 to carry out tlie purposes for which they were intended — fur- 

 nish comfort for the family, shelter for the crops and stock, and 

 an abundance of forage. As is the farmer so is the farm. The 

 man is the responsible agent, not the inert matter on which he 

 treads. Let another owner, one of skill and enterprise, take 

 possession of one of these water-soaked, hard-hacked farms, 

 with its dilapidated, moss-grown buildings, and how soon a 

 change comes over the face of things ! The surplus water is 

 drained off; the hard-hacks and other bushes are shaken as a 

 terrier shakes a rat ; manure, the life-blood of the land, is gath- 

 ered from the score of resources which have lain around the farm 

 neglected for a century ; the plough runs a little deeper, bring- 



