Economical Management of Materials, Sfc, on the Farm. 355 
embraced, and there are but few which can be excluded from 
this category, the following is by my authority set down as 
axiomatic : " Those experiments, or that work only, is perfect 
when no useless refuse is left as the resultant of the process." 
From this is deduced, as a corollary or natural consequence, 
" All progress " in any of the branches of technical or material 
work " will resolve itself into the progress of economy." 
But refraining from insisting upon this high status for my 
subject, and taking a very much lower one, even then it will 
be admitted readily enough that it possesses no small claim 
to the consideration of all interested in the material progress 
of the arts and sciences. And, with reference specially to that 
science in which the readers of this Journal are so deeply inte- 
rested, it is not easy to limit its utility, or to narrow the range of 
its application. Nor assuredly can there be a time better fitted 
for the application of its principles to the every-day practice 
of the estate or the farm than the present. Never before were 
these more likely to meet with ready acceptance and intelligent 
reception than now — now, when agriculture is so depressed 
that every legitimate means, however humble, ought to be taken 
to lighten the load which the great majority of its followers are 
called upon to bear. 
In proposing to carry out any new plan by which work is 
to be done more rapidly or economically, that plan has all the 
better chance of being readily adopted, should it demand few 
appliances or aids, more especially if those would otherwise 
have been of an expensive character. Now this is one of the 
great advantages possessed by the plans or methods of opera- 
tion or procedure by which the numerous details of my subject 
are carried out. Practical as those details are, they can be 
secured at once without the employment of appliances more or 
less costly, and always difficult, certainly not easy at all times, 
to be had. 
The very nature indeed of the various classes of the general 
subject, or rather the terms in which they are stated, indicate that 
all unnecessary outlay is to be avoided. The doing away with 
*' waste" of every kind, whether that be of time or materials — 
the transforming into substances more or less valuable those 
which are already " waste," or considered to be such — the em- 
ployment of substances already valuable, but in such a way, or 
in such ways, as to increase that value— the distribution of 
substances of various kinds in daily use on the estate or the 
farm, in such a way that a lesser bulk or weight will give higher 
economical results — the pointing out of new sources of power, 
and of materials useful in a variety of ways — such sources being 
present on the estate or on the farm — the discussion of subjects 
2 A 2 
