68 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



stock and conduct the dairy in the best manner farmers 

 require a knowledge of this science. Nor can they as a 

 class afford to be much longer without it; for it has always 

 been found that the application of scientific principles to 

 any branch of industry puts power into the hands of the 

 intelligent to drive ignorance from the field of competi- 

 tion ; so that, as discoveries multiply and information is 

 diffused, those farmers who decline to inquire into the 

 principles which govern their vocation, or who prefer the 

 study of politics to that of agriculture, will have occasion 

 to groan more deeply than ever over the unprofitableness 

 of their business. 



The superiority of natural sciences over all other ob- 

 jects of study, to engage the attention and awaken the 

 interest of pupils, is conceded as a fact of experience by 

 the ablest teachers. This can not be otherwise; for the 

 infinite wisdom of the Creator is nowhere so perfectly dis- 

 played as in the wonderful adaptation which exists between 

 the young mind and the natural world with which it is 

 encompassed. On one hand, there is the realm of Nature, 

 endless in the variety of its objects, indescribable in its 

 beauty, immutable in its order, boundless in its beneficence, 

 and ever admirable in the simplicity and harmony of its 

 laws; on the other, there is the young intellect, whose 

 earliest trait is curiosity, which asks numberless questions, 

 pries into the reasons of things, and seeks to find out their 

 causes as if by the spontaneous promptings of instinct. 

 The study of Nature is, therefore, the most congenial em- 

 ployment of the opening mind, and one of its purest 

 sources of pleasure. Every fact that is learned becomes a 

 krey to others ; every progressive step discloses wonders 

 previously unimagined. 



When the introduction was finished, in the autumn 

 of 1851, the manuscript was at once placed in the 

 hands of D. Appleton & Co. for publication. The 



