*V ESSAY. 



Jjut in so saying I must be understood to speak of labor 

 in its just proportions. In excess it does great harm. 

 It is not as good when made the sole work of life. It 

 must be joined to high means of improvement, or it 

 degrades instead of exalting. Man has a various nature 

 which requires a variety of occupations and discipline 

 for its growth. Study, meditation, society, relaxation 

 should be mixed up with his physical toils. He has 

 intellect, 'heart, imagination, taste, as well as bones and 

 muscles, and he is grievously wronged when compelled 

 to exclusive drudgery for bodily subsistence." We have 

 had too much art and too little science. Farming has 

 been too empirical. We have been guided by a sort 

 of independent empiricism, rather than by enlightened 

 science. Not that a well instituted experiment for decid- 

 ing any particular point should be disparaged, but life 

 should not be all experiment. Too many of our farmers 

 toward trje close of life, look back upon their earlier 

 efforts as having been guided by a policy essentially 

 bad. " Time and capital," says Liebig, " are wasted in 

 experiments." A few successful results,. cannot estab- 

 lish a reliable rule. We have decried the long experi- 

 ence of scientific men, called it " book knowledge," 

 "impractical," forgetting that these very theories are 

 the result of practice, and that our own practice has 

 a theory to it. The mechanic, receiving the data and 

 formulae of forces and agencies as true, works straight 

 forward to a result, the truth of which he does not 

 doubt. The farmer, though the laws governing the 

 growth of a blade of corn, more impalpable perhaps, 

 but not more unreal, are old as the world, is slower to 

 receive them — the laws of motion are no more certain 

 and fixed than those of chemical affinities; the bino* 



