282 MY FARM. 



gical considerations I think a man of tolerable parts 

 might find enough to lay his mind to very closely, 

 and to encourage some activity of thought. 



There will be disappointments as in every sphere 

 of life. I have felt them keenly and often. The 

 humus has baffled my expectations, and my potatoes ; 

 the nitrogenous riches have shot up into thickets of 

 rank and watery luxuriance ; the phosphoric acid has 

 oozed into some unthrifty combination, or has re- 

 mained locked up in an unyielding nugget of Som- 

 brero. But little disappointments count for nothing, 

 when (as now) we are reckoning the pabulum which 

 agricultural employments furnish for intellectual ac- 

 tivity. The rural adventurer may not only regale 

 himself with a considerable series of nice chemical 

 puzzles at every cropping-time, but he may give his 

 thoughts to original investigation of the habits of the 

 plants themselves ; the career of a Decandolle could 

 have had no finer start-point than a country farm 

 with its living herbaria, and its opportunities for ob- 

 servation ; we want a good monograph of our great 

 national crop of maize so soon as the man shall ap- 

 pear to make it. We want, too, some Buffon (with- 

 out his foppery) to unearth our field mice, and to put 

 a great tribe of insect depredators to flight. 



