No. 199.] 327 



and better in quality, and thus adopt the advice of the agricultural 

 poet — 



« Praise the large farin9> bat cultivate the smaL 

 " Laudato iagentia rura, exigwtm coUto." 



The observant mind is also to be more encouraged. It must be more 

 stimulated to watch changes in temperatures, in winds, in seasons ; to 

 journalize important facts and experiments ; to improve occasions, and 

 draw useful hints from all sources around it. 



The farmer is almost a different being, and especially in this country, 

 from what he was in much of the world two centuries ago. He has 

 long ceased to fear poisoning his ground and crops by manures. He 

 has, and by our systems of free schools, more extended, and, of cheap, 

 printing increased, he will continue to have still more intelligence to 

 improve in every thing. He is not now a mere machine of bone and 

 muscle. He is a ruler, and not merely ruled. Instead of a serf he 

 is a capitalist, a freeholder ; and who cannot become one amidst our 

 boimdless public domain ? He is, in short, a thinking being, a re- 

 former, a man of reading and experiments, not 



« chained to one peculiar spot, 



To draw nutrition, propagate and rot." 



Philosophy, even, will aid such a mind the more she herself enlarges 

 her discoveries, and will excite many new reflections, and open a door 

 to many agricultural improvements. Take, for instance, such facts as 

 that recently established in respect to the Gulf Stream, that when 

 flowing near lands it sensibly influences their warmth and moisture. 

 So that from this cause certain grasses and grains will flourish, and 

 others fail, in some places, in some latitudes, which will not happen 

 in other places alike, north or south. As heat, moisture, or prevail- 

 ing winds differ permanently in the same latitudes, which they often 

 do, from more or less proximity to the ocean, to lakes or to moun- 

 tains, or from elevation more or less above the ocean — without enu- 

 merating still other causes — different crops must be resorted to, and 

 many different rules or laws in rural economy must be relied on, 

 almost as much as in latitudes entirely different. Thus, of China, a 

 writer says, that " terraces of earth are piled upon the sides of its 

 rocky hills, one above another, to the very summit. These are tilled. 



