INTELLECT IN FARMING. G9 



work as soon as they are big enough to pick up stones and 

 potatoes. If an axe is dull we sharpen it, but if a boy's wits 

 are deficient he must make up in muscle what he lacks in brain. 

 This is treating steel better than we do boys. Besides, this 

 practice is based on the false supposition that muscle is the 

 main thing in farming. If this were so, we might as well 

 leave the management of our farms to the oxen, for they sur- 

 pass us in muscular power. The truth is, no occupation calls 

 for more varied and accurate knowledge than agriculture. Not 

 one of the whole round of sciences comes amiss on the farm. 

 Chemistry, botany, geology and zoology lie at the foundation 

 of scientific and practical agriculture. We include the practi- 

 cal, for no man can practice the art of agriculture without some 

 knowledge of its science, derived possibly from his own limited 

 experience, observation and conversation ; but still it is science, 

 using the word in its broad sense. We are too far along in the 

 nineteenth century to ridicule science in agriculture, or book- 

 farming, as it has been called. We might as well ridicule the 

 science of medicine, or law or mechanics. Why should not the 

 physician practise the healing art without studying the science, 

 or the mechanic build a cathedral without a knowledge of the 

 principles of architecture, just as well as the farmer practise his 

 art with no preparatory study ? No reason can be given for 

 scientific research in one occupation that cannot be given in the 

 other. We have quacks in medicine, far too many of them ; 

 we have mechanics, who are mere tools, doing without much 

 thought just as the master directs ; and we have practical 

 farmers who go through a certain routine of labor, much as 

 their fathers did before them and much as they see their 

 neighbors doing around them. Excellence cannot be attained 

 in this way. 



I must not be understood as condemning or undervaluing 

 practice. I would not trust a physician who had all the theo- 

 retical knowledge to be gathered from the days of Hippocrates 

 down to the present time, unless he had acquired some skill by 

 practice. It is only when science and practice are combined 

 that we may look for marked success, either in the professions, 

 trades, manufactures or agriculture. Some one may confront 

 me with examples of men who have had no thorough training 

 in the school, but still have risen to eminence in their callings. 



