AGRICULTURAL PAPERS AND BOOKS. 71 



Another cause of the prejudice is the undoubted fact that 

 comparatively few farms owned by city men, who are usually 

 the devotees of book-farming, are a source of profit to their 

 owners. In some cases these gentlemen, doubtless, make grave 

 mistakes, for a successful farmer is as unlikely to be made by the 

 study of books alone as a successful merchant or manufacturer. 

 All books on farming presuppose their readers to be practical 

 farmers, familiar from boyhood with the details of farm work, 

 and consequently able to apply scientific doctrine in the light 

 of common sense and experience. Whoever, without expe- 

 rience, undertakes to carry on a farm, is as likely to come to 

 grief as he who so undertakes to carry on a factory. Finally, 

 it is as true now as in Ben Franklin's time that 



" He who by the plow would thrive 

 Must either hold himself, or drive." 



No farm to which the actual owner does not give his prin- 

 cipal attention and thought is likely to be profitable. The 

 " practical farmer " who should undertake to carry on his 

 farm by weekly visits only, would be even less likely to secure 

 profitable results than the city man who adopts the same 

 course. 



As a matter of fact, however, substantially all books on 

 agriculture which are now issued, are the work of intensely 

 practical men wdio place their experience and observation at 

 the command of mankind. They are compact and complete 

 statements of what the author knows, and are of the utmost 

 value to the practical farmer who will make use of them. It 

 would be difficult, if not impossible, for a poor book to find 

 a publisher, for even the very best books yield hardly any 

 revenue either to publishers or authors, for the reason that 

 farmers do not buy them. In the long run, I suppose those 

 which get published pay for themselves, but I doubt whether 

 Professor King's invaluable book on "Soils," for example, has 

 ever paid its author a dollar a day for the time actually spent 

 in writing it and correcting the proof sheets, to say nothing 

 of pay for the time speni in acquiring the information. I 

 have prepared, as very valuable information, a list of some late 

 books on agriculture, with publishers and price, which will be 



