CHAPTER VIII. 



THE STUDY OF THE FARM. 



THE foregoing review of the principal agencies external 

 to the farm which the fanner may employ to increase 

 his knowledge, has prepared us to consider that greatest 

 of all means for self-improvement, which is the study of the 

 farni itself. If the somewhat elaborate study of other agencies 

 has led any reader to imagine that I suppose that any one can 

 becom.e a good farmer by any other means than by faithful 

 devotion to the duties of the farm, I beg that he now recognize 

 that he is in error. It is only on and by the farm that the man 

 can become a farmer. 



It is this feeling which all engaged in any industr}' possess 

 that only by the practice of an art can the art be learned, that 

 is doubtless at the bottom of the farmer's distrust of " book 

 farming;" his error consists in supposing that any intelligent 

 person believes otherwise. The external aids in the way of 

 schools, lectures, books, and experiments, are to be understood 

 as aids and nothing more. They put the farmer in possession 

 of information acquired by others, which he may apply to his 

 own advantage upon his own farm; and the farmer who thinks 

 that he can successfully compete without more or less of this 

 {lid, and refuses to accept it wdien offered, is in all probability 

 a lost man. Any farmer who could by any possibility be con- 

 sidered smart enough to succeed with only his own experience 

 as a guide, will be the first man of all to avail himself of tlie 

 experience of others. But of all studies, that of one's own farm 

 is the most important. 



In the study of a farm, it is probable that hardly any two 

 men would proceed alike. Each man, knowing certain things, 

 would endeavor to add to his knowledge in such directions as 

 he felt a lack, and in so doing would proceed according to the 



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