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New England Farmer, records it, and other people try 

 the experiment, and that is book-farming. AgoAn — 

 Friend Sewall of Medfield, Breck of Milton, Marsh of 

 Dedham, or some other good enterprising farmer of Old 

 Norfolk, reclaims a miserable alder swamp, and causes it 

 to yield bountiful crops ; the farmers round want to hear 

 about it, and see it ; so to save his time and trouble, he 

 prints an account of it ; his neighbors ditch, drain and till 

 their swamp as he directs in this account ; and again, 

 that is book-farming. By and by, you or I, or some one 

 of us who has had a wide field of observation and expe- 

 rience in agricultural matters for a term of years, jots 

 down what he has seen and done in the farming line, and 

 makes a book of it. People follow the various hints and 

 suggestions, and good practical advice contained in it, 

 and thus become — book-farmers ; and nothing so foolish 

 or terrible after all. Book-farming then, is merely the car- 

 rying out of the experiments , and practising the advice 

 given in agricultural vmrks and periodicals, and thus im- 

 proving on the old ways and methods. And this is vastly 

 better, I take it, than going on in the same old beaten 

 path, unwilling to try any thing new, and never making 

 any improvement on our farms, any progress in agricul- 

 ture — a stone in one end of the bag and corn in the other. 

 Of course, the farmer must use his own reason and com- 

 mon sense in carrying out the experiments and receiving 

 the advice of such books and periodicals. He will re- 

 member, that on the farm, as elsewhere, " circumstances 

 alters cases ; ' ' that in any experiment, difference of soil, 

 climate, position, &c., must always be taken into the 

 account. For example, a farmer, about to plant an or- 

 chard, reads the advice of a writer, whose soil is a heavy 

 clay, not to set trees in the Ml, as the frosts will be liable 

 to heave their roots out of the earth. But his soil is a 

 sandy loam and doesn't heave at all, and by waiting till 



