15 



the same diligence that they pitched their camps, and 

 secured their corn with the same care that they formed 

 their armies for battle ?" This was intelligent, careful, 

 and loving labor, and the ever grateful earth responded 

 by pouring forth her rich treasures into its lap. 



But I am not content with the general proposition 

 that intelligent is superior to unintelligent labor, true 

 as it is. There is at the present day, — ^most of it of 

 recent origin, — what may be called an agricultural 

 literature, embracing not simply the results of scien- 

 tific research and analysis, by such men as Sir Hum- 

 phrey Davy, Liebig, Johnston and others, — great bene- 

 factors to the cause of agriculture, — but the teachings 

 of experience also, for the benefit of those who have no 

 reverence for the demonstrations of science, believing 

 them to be all moonshine, of no more worth than a 

 fog-bank for anchorage. We have in the Transactions 

 and Reports of societies and boards of agriculture, and 

 the various agricultural journals, some of them very 

 carefully edited, a sort of history of what is doing, and 

 what has been done to subdue wild nature and turn 

 the earth into a garden. These alone furnish to the 

 farmer much useful reading, which, besides its direct 

 effect on practice, will serve to stimulate the mind, and 

 help those who labor to labor in a hopeful, trusting 

 spirit, which, next to intelligence, is what is most 

 needed, — ^labor in a trusting, hopeful spirit. 



The friends of agriculture have been sometimes 

 ready to despond, in view of the slow progress of the 

 art of cultivating the soil, and the difficulty of intro- 

 ducing new ideas and new modes of culture, — practi- 

 cal agriculturalists, as a body, being, it is asserted, 

 " more opposed to change than any other large class 

 of the communit3^" And yet the history of agricul- 

 ture, for the last half or tlirec-quarters of a centur}^, 



