BOOK SECOND. 



The Farmer's Education. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE SCIENTIFIC FARMER. 



IT is hard to account for the intense prejudice, often 

 amounting to positive hostilit\% wliich many farmers 

 entertain towards "scientific farming." An editor of a 

 long-established agricultural journal once told me that he 

 never allowed the term "scientific" to be used in its columns 

 as applied to any farming operations, knowing, as he did, 

 the intense dislike of many farmers for the term. And as 

 the subscribers to agricultural journals comprise the most 

 intelligent farmers, we can imagine what the prejudice must 

 be among the more unintelligent class, which reads no such 

 papers, and which my friend did not, therefore, have in mind. 



Of course, like all prejudice, this has its origin in a mis- 

 understanding, since no sane person would or could object 

 to scientific farming, if he knew what is meant by it. What 

 those dislike who ridicule scientific farming is what every- 

 body dislikes, which is unfounded pretensions to superior 

 knowledge. 



While engaged for a short time in promoting Farmers' 

 Institutes for the University of California, it was my duty to 

 become fully informed of the feeling of farmers in regard to 

 the work, in order that we might adapt our lectures and 

 discussions to the real feeling, and not attempt to lead in any 

 way until we had first gained confidence. It was, therefore, 

 my habit to ask two or three of the most interested to carefully 



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