CHAPTER VII. 



WHY GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENTAL FARMS ARE SO 

 SPECIALLY NEEDED, AND THE LINES ON WHICH 

 THEY SHOULD BE LAID. 



IT is well known that, with but few exceptions, agri- 

 culturists will not read, and are, indeed, averse to 

 any form of intellectual exertion. This is not peculiar 

 to farmers. I have found it the same in the case of my 

 brother planters in India. The chief explanation of this 

 is that, as a rule, the brightest members of families who 

 have to earn their bread are sent to the professions and 

 the public services, and the remainder to pursuits where 

 no examinations have to be passed, and which do not call 

 for intellectual activity. The natural result, then, is that 

 a lad goes into, or is bred on, a farm, learns the routine 

 that goes on there, and nothing outside of it, for any- 

 thing outside of it would require that intellectual 

 activity for the want of which he was sent to farming. 

 For a time this answers fairly well, for every farmer 

 gradually acquires a considerable amount of valuable 

 practical knowledge which is suitable to existing con- 

 ditions. But let any change in the times occur which 

 demands a new system, or important modifications in the 

 old one, and the farmer who knows nothing outside of 

 the routine he has been drilled into is liable to be, and 

 often is, in a very helpless condition in consequence of 

 the want of general agricultural knowledge. Worse 

 still, he is steeped into a thorough belief that the 

 system he has learned is infallible, and therefore suited 

 to any times — a belief which, of course, seals his 

 mind against the intrusion of any new ideas. When 



