218 Influence of Agriculture on Health. 
rent from their effects, and that the means which we have em- 
ployed for their detection have completely failed, only shows the 
imperfect condition of chemical science, which more exact know- 
ledge may ultimately correct. 
As an employment conducive to health, and tending to promote 
longevity, agriculture in its practical operations bears important 
and interesting relations to hygeine. Statistics carefully com- 
piled, and exhibiting the comparative duration of life among dif- 
ferent occupations and professions, award to agriculture a prepon- 
derance greatly surpassing most others; that such should be the 
fact, very many obvious reasons at once present themselves. Such 
is the peculiar character of its particular duties that it not only ad- 
mits, but almost requires, of regular exercise of the physical frame, 
taken in moderation in the open air, accompanied with a suffi- 
ciency of mental stimulus to render bodily exertion pleasant and 
agreeable. Stated habits of sleep and alimentation, absence from 
inordinate care and excitement, intervals of relaxation from bodi- 
ly labor, the certainty of a comfortable subsistence, and the ame- 
liorating influence which constant association with objects of 
nature has in elevating the moral feelings and rendering the pro- 
pensities subservient to the control of the higher intellectual 
powers. These are some of the reasons why, so far as the com- 
forts of health are concerned, this employment stands in favorable 
contrast with many, which though more pretending, at the same 
time demand a penalty, which if maturely considered, there are 
few would care to have exacted. The circumstances just enume- 
rated, are exactly those with which the medical adviser would 
seek to surround his patients in the sequence of a multitude of 
diseases, when his drugs and prescriptions had lost their potency, 
when the system reacting from the over stimulus of medicine and 
disease, required to be left to its own recuperative energies, con- 
joined with pure country air, proper attention to diet and exer- 
cise, and the invigorating influence of agreeable mental emo- 
tions. 
The occupations and pleasures of rural life, have ever been the 
themes upon which poets, and writers of lively and exuberant im- 
aginations, have delighted to dwell, but that there is something 
more substantial even than in the brilliant and fanciful pictures 
drawn by these individuals, and that their prototypes have real 
existence in nature, witness the expressions of pleasure with 
which the feeble, emaciated and enervated resident of the town, 
tearing himself from the murky atmosphere, the noisome smells, 
and the putrid exhalations of its pent up streets; leaving behind 
him the excitements, the dissipation and the artificial life of the 
city; after a long interval finds himself in the diversified scenery 
of a beautiful and romantic country. His seeing, his hearing, his 
