136 ESSEX AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



never be substituted in the place of personal observation and 

 experience. The truth of this latter opinion is fully admitted : 

 but it may well be questioned, whether, as guides in under- 

 standing, the various objects and operations of agriculture, 

 books may not afford to beginners the most valuable assistance. 

 "Books on farming," says Stephens, in his Book of the Farm, 

 " to be really serviceable to the learner, ought not to constitute 

 the arena on which to study farming — the field being the best 

 place for perceiving the fitness of labor, to the purposes it is de- 

 signed to attain — but as monitors for indicating the best modes 

 of management, and showing the way of learning those modes 

 most easily. By these, the practice of experienced farmers might 

 be communicated and recommended to beginners. By consult- 

 ing those which had been purposely written for their guidance, 

 while they, themselves, were carefully observing the operations 

 of the farm, the import of labors — which are often intricate, 

 always protracted over considerable portions of time, and nec- 

 essarily separated from each other — would be acquired in a 

 shorter time, than if left to be discovered by the sagacity of be- 

 ginners." 



It may, also, be said, in answer to this objection, that those 

 who consult agricultural books, while their minds are plastic, 

 and their habits forming, will be far more likely to improve 

 upon the practice of their fathers, than if they only followed 

 them in their routine of husbandry. It is well known with what 

 facility a young man adopts as the best, the modes of farming 

 that are practised on the homestead, and with what pertinacit)^ 

 he adheres to them in all after life. Hence it is, that farmers, 

 as a class, are so slow, not merely to make innovations, but to 

 adopt real improvements. The fault is, not that they follow 

 the ways of their fathers, but that they follow them blindfold, 

 and with a sort of undeviating exactness, amounting to vener- 

 ation. To the youth, who is ambitious to attempt nothing be- 

 yond what his progenitors have accomplished, the old cart-ruts 

 worn by them through long generations, are vastly safe and 

 convenient to travel in. But it is believed, that in farming, as 

 in other pursuits, something new and valuable will, from time 

 to time, be discovered. And it is by inquiring minds, and en- 



