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2d. The small amount of talent hitherto in all countries 

 considered necessary to fit a man to become an excellent 

 farmer. This not only lowers the general education and 

 attainments of the agricultural class, and the estimation in 

 which they are held — but it unfits them, as a body, readily 

 to appreciate the labors, or to listen to the counsels of men 

 of science, however prudent and practical they may be. 



3d. The special deficiency, among all grades of the agri- 

 cultural community, (in England among landlords, among 

 tenants and among laborers,) of any instruction in the 

 elementary parts of those branches of knowledge by which 

 the principles of agriculture are especially illustrated. 



4th. The extreme sub-division of the land, which you may 

 not see in this country for many generations, but which 

 already exists as a great evil in some of the countries of 

 Europe. It prevents the use of improved implements, and 

 therefore the encouragement of agricultural mechanics — 

 because the farmer is too poor to buy anything but the 

 merest necessaries. It prevents also the purchase of ma- 

 nures, natural or artificial, to any extent — the employment 

 of paid labor in farming — and generally all those forms of 

 improvement which demand an outlay of capital, or to 

 which the occupation of a considerable breadth of land is a 

 necessary pre-requisite. 



5th. An obstacle peculiar to your country, and to its pre- 

 sent transition state — and it is really a serious obstacle to 

 improvement — is the feeble local attachment by which the 

 proprietors of the more newly settled districts are bound 

 to their farms. This appears in the fact that so many of 

 your farms are for sale. Few families have yet become 

 so attached to their locations as to be unwilling to sell 

 them, if a fair offer be made. The head of the family 

 trusts to his own skill to do better elsewhere for all his 

 household, with the money for which they may be sold. 



