246 Ensilage. 



should write out his experience in book form, it 

 would be denounced as book farming? Whence do 

 farmers' sons get the idea that, as soon as they ob- 

 tain an education, there is no use for it on the 

 farm ? They are sent to school, taught chemistry, 

 botany, engineering, and siirveying, but from their 

 fathers' examples they have learned to think that 

 such an education may do well enough for a book- 

 keeper or a dry-goods clerk, but to apply such 

 knowledge to an agricultural pursuit is all wrong; 

 it is book farming, and yet it is knowledge that can 

 be put to practical use on the farm. 



Do farmers mean to acknowledge that their pro- 

 fession requires less intelligence than others? 



What is there in farming that requires a man to 

 be ignorant? Must a farmer, in getting on in the 

 world, move backward like a crab, or as Mark Twain 

 says of the inhabitants of the Azores Islands, among 

 whom all efforts to introduce new and improved 

 methods of farming have failed : " The" peasants 

 crossed themselves, and prayed to God to shield 

 them from all blasphemous desire to know more 

 than their fathers did before them "? 



These questions I will leave the reader to solve. 

 However, I will venture to suggest as a remedy, a 

 better education for the future farmer. The great 

 problem of feeding and clothing the millions de- 

 pends upon the success of agriculture, and requires 

 of its followers a knowledge that embraces a wider 

 and more liberal education than any other pursuit. 



Said the late President Garfield: " At the head of 



