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operations depend." He may not have acquired dex- 

 terity in their application. He may be less successful at 

 first than the other. That is no reason against his ulti- 

 mate success. For the best farmers that I know are in- 

 telligent book-farmers, not brought up to the business, 

 but having adopted it in mature life and conducting it on 

 just principles, make it profitable. Such men may fail at 

 first ; and the man of routine who dreads or dislikes in- 

 novations may be diverted by their mistakes. We 

 have enjoyed a laugh at the blunder of the farmer, who, 

 in attempting for the first time to trim his apple-trees, 

 placed his ladder against the limbs he sawed off and 

 gained knowledge through nrtificial bumps upon his fore- 

 head. Such blunders are fair game. Put the mere 

 practical farmer and the man of science in a new posi- 

 tion ; let them be required to determine on the cultiva- 

 tion of a new article, or the use of a new manure, or 

 the renovation of a worn-out soil, or the probable result 

 of a new method, and there can be little doubt whose 

 judgment would be safest. There can be little doubt 

 which would be most likely to foresee what part of a pro- 

 posed system is erroneous and what correct. The man 

 of routine is then at sea without compass. The man of 

 science has a guide in his knowledge and his intellectual 

 discipline, not infallible, but of inestimable advantage. 

 The merely practical man is apt to look at proposed 

 changes through the spectacles of prepossessions engen- 

 dered by habit, — forgetting that there is nothing so de- 

 structive as unreasoning conservatism, nothing so unnat- 

 ural as an effort to counteract the laws of the world's on- 

 ward movement. No man can originate improvements, 

 however Avell he may perform specific tasks, unless he 

 understands the principles on which the processes depend. 

 The end of life will find him in the place he occupied at 

 its beginning. The man of science has liberalized his 



