EXACT AND EXPERIMENTAL AGRICULTURE. 85 



again, that the satisfaction and advantages of doing these would 

 greatly overbalance the trouble and care. Ask an intelligent 

 and enterprising manufacturer about his concerns. He can tell 

 you, if he deserves that character, how much power of water he 

 has, even to an inch ; how many spindles he can carry ; how 

 many pounds of wool or cotton he can work up ; how much 

 fuel, how much oil, how much dye-stuff he requires ; how 

 many pouuds of wool or of cotton are needed to make a yard of 

 cloth of a certain degree of firmness ; how much of human labor 

 he can employ to advantage ; and at what rate exactly he can 

 afford to sell his cloth in order to get a living profit. Now is 

 there any reason in the world, why a farmer should not be, as 

 far as possible, as exact and calculating in his concerns as the 

 manufacturer ? would he not find an equal advantage in it ? and 

 is not the want of this exactness and care one of the great 

 reasons, why farmers in too many cases find their farms either 

 an unprofitable or a losing concern, and in point of improvement 

 are just where their fathers were a century ago ? Keep a jour- 

 nal therefore ; a diary. Keep an account of every field and 

 every crop. Ascertain what it costs ; what it comes to ; what 

 you have done for it, and what you do with it. Keep an ac- 

 count in some form with every domestic animal on your place. 

 See whether they pay or how they can be made to pay for their 

 hving ; whether you keep them for profit or pleasure. Do not 

 be ashamed of mistakes and false judgments and miscalculations, 

 unless you voluntarily run into them a second and a third time ; 

 because no human judgment is infallible, and the wisest are ever 

 liable to err ; and in the first place take care not to impose upon 

 yourself, and in the next place, when you undertake to tell your 

 neighbors what you have done, be sure you are able to speak 

 the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 



Next to exactness is another matter intimately connected with 

 it and of like importance to an improving agriculture, that of 

 making experiments. You are too intelligent to indulge in the 

 senseless clamor about agricultural experiments and experimen- 

 tal farmers. You know that in agriculture all knowledge is the 

 result of experiment, and those are esteemed the best farmers, 



