€ssM)s mx)i |Uprts. 



AN ESSAY 



ON THE ECONOMY OF AGRICULTURE. 



BY L. W E T H E K E I, L. 



The word Economy, at the present day, has a great vaiiety of ap- 

 plications. The ancient Greeks used it only with reference to domes- 

 tic affairs — never applying it to Agriculture, as now employed, but 

 used the word Geoponics, whenever speaking of what related to the 

 tillage of the earth. From the word husband which means a farmer, 

 or cultivator of the soil, is derived husbandry which signifies the busi- 

 ness of a farmer, or one engaged in Agriculture ; so that all that is 

 contained in the expression "Economy of Agriculture," is embodied, 

 or nearly so, in that good old Saxon household word, "husbandry," 

 which is perfectly familiar to all, whose mother-tongue is the Anglo- 

 Saxon. 



•'■ Puhlic Eco7io7ny,'" says Colton, "t« the application of knotoledge 

 derived from experience to a given position, to given interests and 

 to given institutions of an independent state or nation for the in^ 

 crease of 2)uMic and private wealth^ 



Knowledge gives power to those who enter into partnership with Na- 

 ture for the purpose of multiplying those products upon which man must 

 subsist while a denizen of earth. Such knowledge as is derived from 

 experience and observation, is unlike that which is obtained from the- 

 ory predicated of hypothesis, founded upon speculation. Theory is 

 only valuable when founded on inferences drawn from principles estab- 

 lished upon facts derived from experience and careful observation in the 

 Laboratory of Nature. Theory in this sense, is true science, which 

 is to know, — or in a more general sense, certain knowledge, compre- 

 hending such facts and truths as will enable even a novice to practice 

 'Ij-; /'tt with a good dcgrc-,- '»f >-i.-,-p<;~ ^h^nrv. -'ti ;v.-v othor s^n-^-. 



