COMMON SENSE IN FARMING. 83 



comfort of our animals in the matter of food and shelter which 

 the stock growers of England employ, we should have breeds 

 and races as valuable to us as theirs are to them? 



The principle which I have been advocating, may be applied 

 in a great variety of ways. It calls for habits of observation 

 and discrimination on the part of the farmer, and rewards him 

 while it furnishes sources of rational entertainment and amuse- 

 ment. Let him study the qualities of the soils of which his 

 farm is composed, and ascertain, by reading, and inquiry, and 

 cheap experiment, for what kinds of crops, or trees, or grasses 

 they are best suited. He need not go to college nor to Ger- 

 many to do this, nor study the hard names which profound 

 chemists give to very homely, every-day things. 



It is not a little singular, that in a matter involving so much 

 science as that of agriculture, there should have been such an 

 aversion to " book-learning " in the popular mind. We find it in 

 nothing else. No man hesitates to ask the doctor what he may 

 give his children for food, or what he may himself apply by the 

 way of a restorative, when he feels poorly. But the idea of 

 resorting to science to know what food he shall give to his 

 springing crop, or what he shall do to restore the wasted ener- 

 gies of his once productive field, has been a standing subject 

 for jeers and ridicule by what are called " practical " farmers. 



It is, indeed, a modern discovery, that different plants require 

 different kinds of food for their growth, and that these are to 

 be sought in the soil in which they are planted, and the air by 

 which they are surrounded. And that if the proper elements 

 of the growth and perfection of a vegetable are not contained 

 in the soil in which it is planted, it is worse than idle to attempt 

 to force it to grow there. 



And it is even a more modern triumph of science to be able, 

 as the organic chemist will, to take a spadeful of earth from a 

 man's field, and pick out and separate, and make palpable to 

 the senses, the several ingredients of earth and alkalies, and 

 salts and gases, of which it is composed, and to tell with as 

 much certainty whether nature could, out of the compound 

 before him, elaborate the clover leaf, or the flax fibre, or the 

 wheat kernel, as you could tell whether you could spin a thread 

 of cotton or wool from a handful of soft, white, fibrous sub- 

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