11 PREFACE 



my cautions and advice to learn navigation 

 before buying your ship, is to blow against the 

 North wind. 



If you have skipped the foregoing, just skip 

 again, back to it. You will see that I have 

 promised to use no scientific terms. This 

 book will be read by more plain people than by 

 scientists, and so I have aimed to talk just as I 

 would if I were trying to teach you how to 

 raise lettuce — or rather trying to teach you to 

 learn for yourself how to raise lettuce. For 

 we cannot teach anyone anything, we can only 

 give him the opportunity of learning. So if 

 the experimental agriculturist thinks that a 

 good deal has been left out that might have been 

 put in, I hope he wUl remember that I have had 

 to pick from a measureless field, and by trying 

 to crowd in too much I might easUy confuse the 

 less experienced and make it hard for him to 

 learn. 



And yet no one need think that by reading 

 a book or any number of books he can be made 

 a gardener. That is done by work of head and 

 hands on the soil; and the best preparation 

 for a really scientific use of your own land, is, 

 to hire yourself out for a while to a market 

 gardener and get the practical, every-day 

 experience. 



