The educated farmer taught to use his brains as well as muscle, will under 

 such accidents and consequences inquire, " why is this thus." Accidents and 

 failures do sometimes teach valuable lessons. A quack once compounded two 

 preparations ; one for the hair, and the other for the stomach. He prepared a 

 large quantity in anticipation of a large trade. A poor neighbor had a sick 

 wife and he gave him a bottle of each kind and verbal directions how to use 

 them. After a little time he returned saying that his wife was much better, 

 and he had brought the bottle that he might get some more. The quack was 

 delighted with the success, and immediately wrote out a certificate, which the 

 man readily signed, testifying to the virtues of the remedy. He said he should 

 be very happy to have him lake home another bottle, and was sure that the 

 cure would be entire by the time it was gone. When the empty bottle was 

 handed him to be filled, be started as if alarmed when he saw the label, and 

 said, " Was this the medicine that your wife took ?" "Sartain, " he replied, 

 " that bottle for the har I sot up for the old woman to use when she got so's to 

 be around." When the door closed upon the retiring neighbor, the quack 

 called to his man in another room, "John, John; come here: we've made a 

 thundering mistake. All those labels have got to be changed. The hair prep- 

 aration is to be taken for the stomach, and the other is for the hair. By 

 George, ain't it lucky we found out how it works so soon ?" It is an essential 

 part of a good education to learn how to learn, how to observe. It is not 

 enough to study the observations of others, but by these to be stimulated and 

 helped to make original ones, and acquire the courage to strike out for success 

 where the path may not have been trodden hard by others going before. 



The laws of nature in relation to the life, propagation and growth of the 

 vegetable kingdom are as certain, sure, and uniform as the laws of motion, heat, 

 electricity, and ail natural forces. If we have the same knowledge of these 

 laws, the same control of the means, and equal skill in our processes and ad- 

 justments, we can be as successful and sure in our labors and results in agricul- 

 ture as in mechanics. To discover these laws and learn how to adjust our 

 means and processes so as to work out the best results, requires something of 

 the skill and genius of almost every other occupation. There is no employ- 

 ment where the variety of knowledge and skill are so directly useful and essen- 

 tial, as ingenious farming. The inventor, manufacturer, trader, chemist, phy- 

 siologist, doctor, financier, teacher, all more or less directly contribute to invest 

 the farmer with power to carry on his enterprise with success. And if practi- 

 cable — if time and means will permit — he may find both pleasure and profit in 

 studying the fundamental principles of many of these and other branches of 

 science and art- Agriculture, though the oldest pursuit of man, seems but in 

 its infancy when compared with its apparent possibilities. Take a stalk of corn 

 when it begins to tassel out, and usually there will be five joints from the root 

 to where the ear usually sets. Now by a careful dissection, and with a mag- 

 nifying glass of twelve to fifteen diameters, a perfect ear of corn may be found 

 in the stalk at every joint down to the root. As you go down they will be 

 each smaller to the last. It is possible to develop each one of these embryo 

 ears. If the stalk is vigorous, when the ear appears at the fifth joint break or 



