38 TEANSACTIONS. 



clearly illustrating. There are comparatively few, that receive the 

 benefit of their labors. 



Not one farmer in five, takes an agricultural paper, and of the few 

 items, that reach him, in the single column of his religious, political, 

 or literary paper, he sees just enough to keep alive his inveterate 

 prejudices against book-farming. They are too brief to give him the 

 explanation of the results they record ; and the great crops and high 

 farming he reads of there, look to him like the stories of Sinbad, or 

 the fictitious entertainments of the Arabian Knights ! They will do 

 very well to read about, but he is not fool enough to base his prac- 

 tice upon them. He was graduated a finished farmer at his majority ; 

 and whatever he expects to learn in politics or religion, he looks for 

 no new ideas in the mode of husbandry ! 



Other men are learners in their callings. The lawyer, the physi- 

 cian, and the divine, all look for improvement in their professional 

 work ; and expect to be more learned advocates, more skilful prac- 

 titioners, and better-read theologians and preachers, at the age of 

 fifty than at thirty. The mechanic is wide awake to any new im- 

 provement in his art, and grasps with eagerness at every new idea, 

 that Avill save him capital or labor. 



Science has revolutionized most of these callings, and added thirty, 

 sixty, or an hundred fold, to the products of capital and labor. But 

 improvement is far from being universally the order of the day among 

 farmers. There is, indeed, a change in some small circles, and we, 

 who feel its impulse, forget the wide expanse beyond, that is still a 

 breathless calm. County and State societies are formed ; and a few 

 public-spirited men, in them, are reaping the advantages of science ; 

 and are demonstrating to others, its utility and economy. But the 

 mass of the people are not yet reached. They are not learners in the 

 business of farming ; and have a fixed horror of improvement, ap- 

 proaching to obstinacy. 



But let science be once introduced into these communities ; as now 

 taught by the best agricultural papers and lecturers, in England, and 

 in this country ; and this darkness must be gradually dissipated. It 

 will make of the present stereotyped farmer a learner. He will come 

 out in a new edition of manhood ; and open his eyes to the stolidity 

 and misery of the present method of skinning, rather than cultivat- 

 ing the soil. All needed improvement will follow the new position 

 of a learner, in the noble art of husbandry. 



Science, with new light, will give a healthful excitement to these 



