18 



Apply the illustration to some of the details of agri- 

 culture. If you see growing on a farm a number of 

 acres of carrots or ruta-bagas, you can take in with a 

 glance the greater amount of foi)d which they afford from 

 the same space of ground, over other usual articles of 

 cultivation. If you witness clean culture and high cul- 

 ture, you can comprehend and estimate their immense 

 advantages. If you observe fruit trees healthy, thrifty 

 and productive, the land under which is kept constantly 

 cultivated, you are impressed with their good manage- 

 ment more forcibly than you can be from any separate 

 exhibition of their fruit, or any statement of their man- 

 agement. Almost every good farmer has a superior way 

 of performing some operations — or a peculiar and de- 

 cidedly improved arrangement either in his farm build- 

 ings or yards or other premises, which might be a- 

 dopted with benefit by others. Farmers, I am aware, 

 are in general so much occupied at home that they 

 can find but little time for visits abroad. The road 

 to market and to mill is the principal road they travel. 

 But let them occasionally take a day for such explora- 

 tions as I have named, and the value of their discoveries 

 will often more than compensate for the time devoted to 

 them. Said one of the oldest and best farmers in my 

 neighborhood, I resolved when I commenced farming, 

 not to follow implicitly the footsteps of my ancestors, 

 but to give a fair trial to whatever I observed in others 

 worthy of experiment. Here I gained one idea and there 

 another, entirely new to me. These were submitted to 

 practice, and I am satisfied that I learned more in this 

 way than by any other course I ever adopted. 



As a general fact, we are too much attached to the 

 old ways — the good old ways of our fathers. Very good, 

 no doubt, they were in their day ; but is there no bet- 

 ter way lor us, is the question we are to settle, each for 

 himself. And to help us to settle it, the course I have 

 mentioned, would be of most eflicient service. Oppor- 

 tunity would thus be afforded, not only of seeing with 

 our own eyes what we wish to see, but of making all in- 

 quiries relative thereto, and of having them answered at 



