14 



ever, honorable and very successful exertions have been made 

 to awaken a more zealous spirit, diffuse greater information and 

 create a better taste in relation to a subject which is of such vital 

 consequence to the United States, where at least eight tenths 

 of the inhabitants are actually engaged in agricultural pursuits, 

 and who, besides supplying the entire alimentary subsistence of 

 the whole population, a large portion of the clothing and other 

 articles of comfort and luxury, furnish more than three quarters 

 of the native products of exportation, amounting to over fifty 

 millions of dollars. 



There are two chief modes, in which improvements are effect- 

 ed in agriculture : one, the introduction of new or valuable spe- 

 cies, or varieties of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the 

 other a more perfect theory in the science and a better applica- 

 tion of labor to the art in all their diversified compartments. The 

 latter includes the requisite implements, as well as the manner 

 in which every kind of cultivation is to be conducted, and the 

 great object of both is to obtain the largest amount of products, 

 which the earth is capable of being made to yield, by the most 

 approved management, and at the lowest possible expense. 



So simple and common are these positions, so self-evident and 

 familiar are they, that it may seem irrelevent as the utterance of 

 truisms to repeat them. They were early proclaimed by Bacon, 

 Tull and Evelyn, and have been emphatically illustrated by 

 Coke, Young, Bakewell and Sinclair names which will ever 

 be illustrious in the annals of agriculture. Yet how little have 

 they been regarded here, and how few among all those, who have 

 spent their lives in cultivating the earth, can say, that they have 

 attempted the fulfilment of the requisitions implied, although so 

 indispensable to their own advancement Routine has been 

 more influential than precept, and custom has domineered over 

 truth and reason. We have been quiescent pupils in the obser- 

 vance of what has been, rather than anxious inquirers of what 

 should and can be done. The mind has been slavishly restrain- 

 ed by prejudice, erroneous example, and that dread of change, 

 which has been so universal and so fatal to the improvement, 

 rights, dignity and happiness of man. Something more then, is 

 required, than a mere knowledge of principles, to insure their 

 salutary influence, and of duty, that it be well performed. There 



