Chap. II. RrxA baga culture. 99 



The earth is extremely grateful ; but it must and 

 will have something to be grateful for. As far as 

 my little experience has enabled me to speak, I 

 find no want of 'willingness to learn in any of the 

 American workmen. Ours, in England, are apt to 

 be A^ery obstinate^ especially if getting a little old. 

 They do not like to be taught any thing. They 

 say, and they think, that what their fathers did was 

 best. To tell them, that it is your afiair, and not 

 theirs is nothing. To tell them, that the loss, if 

 any, will fall upon you and not upon them, has very 

 little weight. They argue, th t, they being the 

 real doers, ought to be the best judges of the mod€ 

 of doing. And, indeed, in most cases, they are, and 

 go about their work with wonderful skill and 

 judgment. But, then, it is difficult to induce them 

 cordially to do any thing new ; or any old thing in a 

 nezv way ; and the abler they are as workmen, the 

 more untractabie they are, and the more difficult to 

 be persuaded, that any one knows any thing, relating 

 to farming affairs, better than they do. It was this 

 difficulty that made me resort to the employment 

 of young women in the most important part of my 

 farming, the providing of immense quantities of 

 cattle-food. But, I do not find this difficulty here, 

 where no workmen are obstinate, and where, too, 

 all one's neighbours rejoice at one^s success, which is 

 by no means the case amongst the farmers in 

 England. 



87. Having now given instructions relative to 

 the business of transplanting of the Ruta Baga, let 

 us see, whether it be not preferable to either the 

 ridge-sowing method, or to the broad-cast method. 



88. In the first place, when the seed is sown on 

 the ground where the plants are to come to per- 

 fection, the ground, as we have seen in Paragraph 

 40 and Paragraph 47, must be prepared early in 

 June, at the latest ; but, in the transplanting me- 

 thod, this work may be put oif, if need be 'till 



